I think by the end of 2011, Ackley will be our #3 hitter...and by far the best one we've had since Edgar Martinez and John Olerud retired.

Not a fan of Mangini (too lo9usy on defense to ever play in the majors and his K/BB isn't encouraging either) or Liddi (worse than Mangini with the strike zone control...no better on D) or Saunders (hit .200 as a Mariner last year) or Chavez (Ms are totally hyping him into their next trade discussions) or Seager (next Willie Bloomquist)...or Tui (clueless in Seattle)...the other prospects are all further away with one possible exception...and that exception would be Rich Poythress.
We have a TON of offensive prospects worth watching, but most of them are further away than 2011.
I do, however, think this will be the year of breakouts for Smoak and Ackley.

I don't think the comparison to Bloomquist is fair to him. Seager has gotten good reviews at third and second base if I'm not mistaken, where Bloomquist has never better than poor anywhere but second, where he's logged less than 750 innings in his major league career. Bloomquist has never sniffed double digit home runs in the majors or minors. He did have that one season, conveniently at the exact same age as Seager, at the exact same level, in park almost as bad as Adelanto's, where his batting line was very similar to Seager's. But in that season, there were a couple significant differences; as I noted before, Bloomquist hit 2 homeruns over nearly 300 plate appearances, and secondly, while Seager had an almost certainly lucky .388 BABiP, Bloomquist had a far luckier .415 BABiP that year. And if he can be Willie Bloomquist with better power, better patience, more strikeouts and less speed, and maybe a little better defense, that's still pretty good.

Seager was playing in a power hitting haven...Bloomquist was not. But even if you want to buy into the power spike Seager showed there (I don't...he wasn't a power hitter at North Carolina)...that makes him Mark McLemore at best...and I think that's stretching it.

The question isn't whether it was real - the question for me is whether we can get somebody to bite on his trade value as if it WERE real and get someone we can use out of him before he gets to AA.
I like Seager, but he's not displacing Ackley unless Dustin absolutely cannot hold down second base.
Even if his AA power was real, he's not a 3B.
He can't stick at SS.
So what are we gonna do with him?  Seager, Poythress and Chavez are all on my tradables list.  We acted perfectly by putting 3 good bats with questions (and potential roadblocks already on our roster) in the desert and letting them pump their numbers to the moon.
I like Seager fine as a bench infield backup.  He looks like a perfectly competent 2B to me - just not a plus one.  We could keep him for that duty.
But an adequate 2B is worth something.  Left-handed David Bell would and should be worth something.
It's just not worth as much to us at the moment.
~G

That on a scale of 1 to High Desert, that Lancaster was a 9 as far as hitters parks go.  I think I did overreact a bit, I happen to be excited about Seager and think he could top out at 15-20 homers a year with walks at second or third base, but that would be his absolute 100th percentile max out.  The most likely probability if he hits the majors is probably somewhere between Bloomquist and Mclemore.

That's who I see.  LH second baseman, single digit HRs, .280/.350/.380ish hitter whose ability to get on base is his key contribution to the team.  Maybe he'll have more power than that, but I wouldn't bet too much on that.  Still, I'd consider that to have value.
~G

I think he's closer to Quilvio Veras than Fernando Vina...in that Veras was bookable and the league eventually figured him out and crushed in his skull. If Seager has a big league career it will either be (a) long, but as a part time player not getting overexposed or (b) very short with a solid few years until he gets booked and they start knocking the bat out of his tiny little hands.

Some would say his profile is more Brian Roberts as a doubles guy who can take a walk. I think he's at least a step back from that, and you apparently do too, because Veras is Vina.
Vina: .280/.350/.380/.730 in 4200 ABs
Veras: .270/.370/.360/.730 in 2800 ABs
Luis Castillo: .290/.370/.350/.720 in 6500 ABs
I'm with you then, Matt.  That exactly the class of hitter I think Seager can reasonably make it to.  
Veras was bookable?  Veras was on base as much as ICHIRO and had about the same power over 6+ seasons.  I don't think that's getting figured out. If you gave me 7 years of a .370+ OBP from second base I'd consider that a heck of a deal for a 3rd round pick and a several years of minimum wage.
I HOPE he's Quilvio Veras / Luis Castillo.  That's just fine with me.  I don't know where we'd use it since our other .370+ OBP 2B, Ackley, is gonna be blocking him, but we can come up with something.
~G

...hung aroud the game longer than they probably would have if it weren't for the fact that they could steal 40 bases. I don't think Seager has that kind of speed. But yes...I thought Veras' peak was shorter than that...I remember the year he flamed out thinking it looked like he got booked. But still, I do stand corrected...looks more like he jsut died the typical small-bodied middle infielder's death...they tend to go early.

And you're right, Seager WON'T be getting those.  Still, a .350-.370 OBP as a middle-infielder makes you a terrific leadoff man regardless of the pop in your bat.  Just don't be sloooow and it'll be fine, and Seager's not a lump.
IMO it's the OBP and not the steals that kept them around a while.  Castillo maxed out at 25 steals his last 7ish years in the bigs, but put up a .387 his last full season.  Then he had a half-season of .337 and was gone at age 34.
Veras posted a .368 his last full year, then for his swansong he tacked up a .413 in a half season before his last partial season of .330.
Second Basemen are not required to hit for power. If you're posting .360s in the on base department you can hang around a LONG while, even if it's your only skill.  Once it goes, you go.
Seager seems like that kind of on-base ability could be in him.  If he finds doubles power in the bigs then he's a lock, but even with just the ability to work a walk he could have a decent ML career.
He didn't walk into Chapel Hill with that ability, btw - I'd be curious to know how much hanging around Ackley improved his ability or desire to take those walks.
~G

Considering that Figgins hit .259/.340/.306 last year?   And that he's .285/.360/.375 life?
.............
A second baseman who can post a .360-.370 OBP is going to post a quality 5.0 RC/G and be one of the league's better 2B's.
If Seager has a shot to post OBP, he has a shot to be a quality regular.

Figgins is also in that class of hitter.  Seager showed better as a 22 year old in High-A than Chone did, even with stats neutralized.  Seager will never have Chone's speed (different years of 14, 18 and 15 triples in the minors!) but his doubles rate in High Desert was impressive on its own.  Also, Chone played for the better part of 2 seasons in Salt Lake, a hitter's park in AAA in its own right and where he put up the only decent minor league lines of his career.
I'm curious to see Seager in Jackson next year. He, Poythress and Chavez all have a lot to prove, but the skills that could make it possible - assuming they're all still here.
I'm thinking one will be gone.  No sense stockpiling powder you're never gonna use.
~G

Seagar, Pythress and Chavez are an interesting trio to consider. Three hitters that span the entire length of the risk/reward curve. Seagar has the lowest ceiling of the three but probably the best chance of hitting it. Chavez has the highest ceiling of the three but probably the least chance of hitting it. Poythress being somewhere between the two on both risk/reward.
I like that Jack builds his portfolio of prospects like this. Seems like a smart philosophy to me.

I don't think that any of the players would be better than a third piece in any trade this winter, they're in High A, and everybody knows it's a hitter's league even if they don't know the degree to which it's a hitter's park in Adelanto.  I think the best course of action would be to roll the dice on them at AA as happened with Alex Liddi who likely could have been bundled off in the Cliff Lee deal.  If even one of them succeeds in West Tenn, then that player will be as the three of them together. 
Also, there was an article a month or so ago in which Dr. Elliot referred specifically to Kyle Seager (and Rich Poythress I think but don't remember for sure) as players that embraced his program fully and in which the results were as expected (improved 'explosiveness' and the like).  Maybe he was cherry picking, but then maybe the exercise routine Dr. Elliot has come up with actually produces significant results and helps players achieve their top percentile.  It's for that reason that I don't think we'll see a lot of minor league players move this season (in addition to the unlikeliness of competition in 2011).

"I don't think that any of the players would be better than a third piece in any trade this winter, they're in High A, and everybody knows it's a hitter's league..."
Phillippe Aumont was in A+ and AA as a reliever, Tyson Gillies  had just finished A+ and JC Ramirez had just finished A+ when we traded the 3 of them for Cliff Lee.  The terrible JCR ERA was dismissed because of the hitter's league statue, it's true...but A+ and AA are where your prospects come from normally.  Very few people are trading AAA players.  They're either too old, or they're too close to helping your own club. The fact that our Cliff Lee harvest from Texas came from AA and AAA is great, but by no means the norm.  If Seager is the third piece in a trade, then that's great - it means we're adding an All-Star to the team.
I think the value of those guys is just fine.  Maybe they're involved in a package deal instead of a 1-for-1 swap, but I wouldn't want to swap my High-A prospect for someone else's High-A prospect.  Bulk-trading Poythress and a couple of relief arms or short-season starters for a major-league player is all right with me.
If that makes him the third piece, so be it, but I don't think it does.
~G