This afternoon John Sickels released his preliminary prospect list — the penultimate step before releasing the 2013 Top 20 list.
As you might imagine, there’s a lot of crossover between this list and my Watchlist. Like I did a year ago, it’s easier to list the omissions, of which there are much fewer, thanks in no small part to my decision to delineate the edges of the radar by separating the young, the old, and the hurt from the regular categories:
| Joel Barrientos | Diomedes Eusebio | Kevin Keyes | Will Piwinica-Worms |
| Justin Bloxom | Matt Foat | Bryan Lippincott | Brian Rauh |
| Paul Demny | Matt Grace | Craig Manuel | Adrian Sanchez |
| Wilmer Difo | Neil Holland | Mike McQuillan | Pedro Severino |
| Pedro Encarnacion | Will Hudgins | Gilberto Mendez | Daury Vasquez |
Similar pattern as last year: Sickels passed on the players that are a little too old for the level or (now) Dominicans that haven’t made it to full-season ball yet. I can live with both of those because my list is necessarily larger than his — he’s covering roughly the top 15% of 30 organizations; my list is more like the upper third of one.
Stay tuned for a breakdown of the Top 20 when Sickels releases it.
UPDATE
Sickels has a quick follow-up post in which he reveals there will be 39 ranked players with five B- or better and eight at C+ — with the caveat that some of the C’s will get the C+ (and one can reasonably infer vice-versa, since Sickels is a tough grader).