Still Quiet on the Minor-League Front
It’s the final Sunday of a brutally slow and long January.
If you’re into helping publishers get their pageviews, then you probably noticed Top 100 posts from Baseball America, Keith Law, and MLB.com. That these came during the week between the NFL’s Conference Championships and the Super Bowl is just a coincidence*
* Narrator: It was not a coincidence
TL;DR – Victor Robles and Juan Soto made all three lists, Carter Kieboom was #90 on the MLB.com list. Robles was ranked anywhere from #4 to #6, Soto was #29 (MLB), #42 (Law), and #56 (BA).
The BA 2018 Prospect Handbook is probably going to come in the mail this week, which will give us some discussion fodder (maybe) and enable me to finish up the 2018 Watchlist (probably). MLB.com claims it will update its Top 30 Lists in February. Whether that’s Feb 1, remains to be seen.
Finally, MASN has announced another bloc of (woo-hoo!) Orioles-free Spring Training games for 2018:
| Sun., Feb. 25 vs. Braves, 1 p.m. | Tue., March 6 vs. Astros, 1 p.m. | Sun., March 11 vs. Cardinals, 1 p.m. | Tue., March 13 vs. Mets, 7 p.m. |
| Fri., March 16 vs. Cardinals, 1 p.m. | Wed., March 21 vs. Astros, 1 p.m. | Fri., March 23 vs. Astros, 6 p.m. |
Thanks, Luke, you’re right that this seems like the empties of January’s. The only excitement is the rankings right now by everybody.
The best news is we’re only a few weeks away from real baseball.
If we could only bore into the minds of the farm skippers minds as they
Play around mentally with the possible line up combinations especially the DP combinations : ??
Cuse- Martinson/Fulu?
Burg- Abreau/ Perez! Davidson!Norfork
POTNATS – Lora/ Noll! Meijia
Hags – CarterK ( if not traded)/ Boggetto! Freeman! Caufeld
Rainy Sunday. NHL All star weekend zzzz!
Why not play a game on this dreary rainy day with spring camps opening in a month: repeat ( level) or rise
For some of the org . Guys: plus others
David Masters? Dan Gamache? Ian Sagdal ? Josh Wilson Rule 5 guy?
K. Norfork? Austin Davidson? Stephen Perez ? Rhett Wiseman? Kelvin G?
BA has ranked the Nats farm system 15th. I’ve seem folks get worked up, here and elsewhere, over such rankings over the years, but such things seem to me like they should be taken with a 50-pound bag of salt. There are a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons that take place in such rankings. Five to seven teams have really good systems (often attached to really bad MLB teams), five to seven have systems that really suck, then 15-18 teams in the middle have decent systems with a few stars and a lot of wannabes. The Nats are somewhere in there. Considering how many decent prospects the Nat have traded over the last 14 months, 15th seems a little high, but who knows?
Everybody coming back. Taylor SwiftHill and now Cody Sadderwhite.
Royals signed IF Nats drafted in 2009but did not sign. Jose Sermo who should be Omaha depth.
I agree that it seems a little high but the very top is strong, with 2 top 50 guys, so maybe that gives it extra weight.
Funny how perceptions change quickly. I can remember a few years ago when it seemed like we were flush with pitching, and ‘known’ as an org with an eye for pitching, and there didn’t seem like an OF could be found anywhere.
Now they go 7-8 deep with interesting OF guys (I’m still intrigued to see if guys like Upshaw and Perkins can turn the corner), and pitching looks like the weakness. It’s a funny game.
You never have enough pitching
Perkins ahead of upshaw by a few miles
Reid Brignac who we all forgot about as a 4-A guy the day Danny signs with Yanx . Brignac should join Knorrs Cuse rotation keeping
Stephen Perez @ Burg to help Abreau develop more ??
The Nats have a top 10 guy (Robles), a top 50 guy (Soto), two who would probably fall 101-150 (Kieboom and Fedde), and four more who would be somewhere in the top 250 (Romero, Antuna, Garcia, and Read). So I’d say eight guys in the top 250 . . . at least until the Realmuto trade . . . but five of the eight have yet to play a full season of games in the Nats’ system. You could probably make an argument that Severino and Stevenson could be on the fringes of the top 250, but with their hitting struggles, you hardly even hear them mentioned right now as potential trade fodder.
I’ve never been a huge fan of how high Perkins was picked and how much he was paid, but he made some nice strides forward in 2017. Upshaw REALLY struggled at Auburn (.179/.347/.236), with 41 walks in 60 games about the only positive. Did he even do enough to start 2018 at Hagerstown?
But bulldogs are still the best … love the run with the “bulldogs” commercial … its true they will chase you down just to lick you to death …