As mentioned last week, Baseball America has been running its Top 20 Prospect Lists and after getting shut out from the GCL, Matt Skole becomes the first Nationals farmhand to get recognition as the #13 New York-Penn League prospect.
Skole was the Nationals’ 5th-round pick out of Georgia Tech and led the NYPL in doubles and RBIs while posting a .290/.382/.438 line. He was the starting desginated hitter for the N.L. affiliates in the league’s All-Star game last month.
I was fortunate enough to see Skole twice on my midsummer jaunt to upstate New York and couldn’t agree more with Sean Hogan’s one-sentence analysis of Skole having “the bat to be an average major league 3B [and] the glove to be an average major league 1B.” He’ll be 22 entering the 2012 season, just four months younger than Hagerstown’s 3B-SS Blake Kelso, but the best guess is that he’ll start at Hagerstown while Kelso moves up to Potomac.