We’re almost ready for the AFL to start, which is where we’ll lead off with this edition of Morning Reading (our fill-in post for when it’s slow on the minors front): • This year the Nationals will fill out the roster of the Mesa Solar Sox. Nick Melotte has a preview on John Sickels’s site. …
Ok, so maybe it’s a little easier to place multiple players in an eight-team league, but that should shouldn’t diminish the distinction of four Potomac Nationals making the Baseball America Top 20 Prospects List — A.J. Cole (#10), Michael Taylor (#12), Robbie Ray (#16), and Billy Burns (#19). Like last year’s contingent of Suns to …
How good were the 2013 GCL Nationals? It’s tempting to fall into the football mindset, where specious aphorisms such as “you are what your record says you are” come twelve for ten cents. This precise question was asked of Baseball America in a recent “Ask BA” column. After a breathless paragraph about Lucas Giolito, J.J. …
Baseball America has issued its Top 20 prospects for the New York-Penn League and coming in at #13 is Jacob Johansen. Thanks to the decision to sign a free-agent closer, which forfeited their 1st round pick, the Washington Nationals’ first pick in the 2013 First-Year Player Draft did not come until the 29th pick of …
They’re a little younger and a little better than they were in 2012. Looking back over the previous three season reviews, it’s a bit an obsession, this thing with the age of the D-Nats. That’s because in the wake of the events of the spring of 2009 — when it was revealed that Smiley was …
For the first time since 2009 (Destin Hood), a Nationals player has been named the Baseball America Top 20 prospect list for the Gulf Coast League… 2012 1st Rd. pick, Lucas Giolito. The 19-year-old entered 2013 with the twin burdens of being the team’s top draft pick and proving himself to be healthy after UCL-replacement …
First off, the point of this post is not to report on the players per se but the list itself. Now, a little background. The watchlist is something I created in 2010, the first year the site was in operation. I knew I didn’t want to rank the players from 1 to 50 (or, as …
For me, looking at the instrux rosters is often a thumbnail sketch on the past draft and the GCL, which of course, until this year was usually a whole lotta “meh.” The last winning season was in 2009, which probably comes as no surprise since there was a sizable contingent from the 2008 DSL champions. …
One month after the strange saga of David DeJesus, the Nationals announced today that 22-y.o. LHP Matthew Spann is the “player to be named later.” Spann was drafted in the 25th round out of Central High School in Columbia, TN (that’s roughly 40 miles south of Brentwood, hometown of Robbie Ray) and was eased into …
Continuing where we left off on Tuesday, here’s the rundown of the position players that have been announced as participating in the Florida Instructional League, a.k.a. “Instrux”: Player Pos. Age 2013 Team(s) 2012 Invite Notes Spencer Kieboom C 22 GCL Y Missed most of 2013 due to TJ surgery on his throwing elbow. Geoffrey Perrott …