I should be used to how trades and lower draft positions make this harder than the year before, not to mention my no longer following the lowest levels as closely. I spent a good chunk of time with a pen and a magic 8 ball notebook while bouncing back and forth between the preliminary post, its comments, and the “top prospect” posts from Baseball America and John Sickels.
So here we go with the seventh annual NationalsProspects.com watchlist. These are the five dozen or so players that we’re paying a bit much more attention to than the others for various reasons.
Few of these guys will actually make it to The Show—for Washington or any other organization—but we still watch and hope for them, just like their friends and families (and agents 😉) do.
Now for the obligatory caveats…
• It’s not a depth chart – Players are listed primarily by the highest level they’ve played. This mostly applies to the pitchers and outfielders, but it’s a fool who assumes that the name at the top of the column is better than the one at the bottom.
• It’s not a prediction of usage – Early on, I listed pitchers by whether they started or relieved. Now, I mostly list them by dexterity; this year I did break apart the “northpaws” because there are so damn many of them.
• It’s not fair – Some names have been dropped and/or shuffled around since the preliminary list was released. Some guys get the benefit of being lefthanded. Others are listed because the position isn’t terribly deep, which unfortunately, is more common than any of us would like.
I haven’t yet added this sidebar to the right yet, but will soon. I hope my copyeditor made fewer mistakes than last month, but if you spot anything, please let us know in the comments.
The next few weeks will be spent writing the player capsules while I wait for the handbook(s) to arrive. I’ll hyperlink the category pages when I’m done and will keep you updated as usual.
In the meantime, feel free to discuss in the comments…
| C | 1B | 2B/SS | 3B | OF | RHRP |
| Severino | Skole | Abreu | Ward | Goodwin | Glover |
| Read | Marmolejos | Sagdal | Gutierrez | Bautista | Brinley |
| Reetz | Simonetti | Noll | Neuse | Stevenson | Mendez |
| C. Kieboom | Robles | Pantoja | |||
| Agustin | Peterson | ||||
| Wiseman | Fuentes | ||||
| Johnson | Howell | ||||
| Perkins | |||||
| Soto | |||||
| Upshaw | |||||
| Evangelista | |||||
| RHSPs | LHPs | DSL Bats | DSL Arms | Notable Arms | Notable Bats |
| Cole | Crownover | Cabello | Sisneros | J. Cordero | Banks |
| Voth | Borne | Falcon | Guillen | Mapes | Corredor |
| Fedde | Guilbeau | Mesa | Chu | A. Lee | Franco |
| Simms | Watson | Morales | Duran | Rivera III | L. Garcia |
| Valdez | Mills | Pascal | J. Peguero | Luzardo | Antuna |
| Baez | Y. Ramirez | ||||
| W. Davis | |||||
| Sharp | |||||
| F. Peguero |