The Preliminary 2013 Watchlist, Part One

With the season reviews complete, the Arizona Fall League finished, and the Rule 5 draft upcoming, it’s time to start looking towards the next iteration of the watchlist. I use the word “iteration” because I prefer to see this as something that’s evolving; Last year, I decided to be more exclusive. This year, I decided to change some of the categorizations to balance both workload and utility.

The changes will be much more visible in part two and thus I’ll go into it in more detail then. In the meantime, here are some of the usual caveats…

It’s not a depth chart… Obviously, when you arrange it the way I have — by the highest level played to date — it’s going to look like it at first glance. But when there’s a “tie,” I can either go alphabetical order or (for the most part) list the player that played more games at the position/level.

It’s based on 2012 usage… Yes, there’s one rather big (6’3″, 225) exception at first base, but that’s more of an acknowledgment of the certainty I feel about Keyes’s position switch in instrux vs. Skole’s usage in the AFL (i.e. there’s a better chance of Skole still playing at 3B than Keyes returning to the OF).

It’s preliminary… I like how Sickels takes feedback with his prospect lists, so part of the purpose of these posts is to listen to your comments (the other part is to keep the traffic coming, *wink, wink*).

As I’ve written previously, let’s not forget players and their families (and their agents) are readers here, too. It’s okay to be critical, but let’s keep it as civil as we can and focused on what the players do (or don’t do) on the field.