A Big Eight? ....
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Dr. D splashes the pot with a huge bet ... is Brandon Mauer now part of a Big Five? To which Pros-Spec 66er Extraordinaire shoves in about four towers' worth of chips, rolling the table over:
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Sanchez is #6. Pike is #7. Is Gohara #8?
I'm not down on Maurer, but super-high on Tyler Pike, ultra-polished low-90s teen lefty. Stepped right out of high school and put up a 1.78 ERA and 10.1 K/9.
And you can't ask for much more than Victor Sanchez did at 17, first time in the states. First 17-year-old to pitch for Everett since ... kid named Felix in 2003. Note: Everett is above rookie league, where almost all teenagers start.
And the scouting types seem to prefer huge Brazilian lefty Luiz Gohara (6-3, 220 at age 16) to any of them.
Wonder if the trademark has lapsed on "Big Eight"?
- See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/brandon-maurer-big-five#sthash.d...
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The other players' seats have flipped backward and their soles of their shoes have a perfect view of the ceiling.
We take Spec's point and want to (1) kick the soccer ball a few more passes downfield, while (2) mixing our metaphors with a high-speed blender.
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=== Baseball Top 100 Qwibbles and Bits ===
Here is a Feb. 19, 2013 Baseball America article by local Conor Glassey.
The below is not surprising, exactly, but Dr. D hadn't been crystal-clear that:
- Virtually all BBA top-100 prospects make the major leagues;
- Many if not most BBA top-100 prospects become MLB regulars;*
- Most MLB All-Stars come from the BBA top-100 list;
- More than 50% of top-5 prospects become MLB All-Stars.
*For example, the 131 pitchers ranked in the top 25 the past 20 years, those guys have averaged over 800 innings in the majors. Perhaps it's fewer than 50% of top-100'ers that become regulars, strictly speaking, but as a group those top 100'ers are going to play a whale of a lot in the bigs.
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In other words, if you are a top-100 prospect, you're probably going to have a decent career in the bigs, if you don't get injured. And it's very, very possible that you're going to become a star.
We say "probably." Adam Moore and Greg Halman were on the list, in their day. Roger Salkeld was #3 on the list at one time -- Lonnie and Mo' Dawg will remember him; we were stocking up on his baseball card.
We presume that the Gentle SSI Reader can bring the right sense of proportion to the disappointment list. Some top-100 prospects wash out. Most do not. The same is true of last year's ML All-Stars. Some will wash out this year. Most will not.
Salkeld is one of the top 10 or 20 prospects disappointments in BBA history, probably. He's not typical. He's a huge outlier on the disappointment side.
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You've got this here yellow sticky note SOMEWHERE. We'll fetch it for you and bring it up on your monitor:
- #17 Zunino
- #18 Taijuan
- #29 Hultzen
- #79 Franklin (hit a bomb today)
- #82 Paxton
As you know, BBA's list is one of many available nowadays. BBA may be no more authoritative than several other national lists; it's less authoritative for me than any consensus I get from G, J, Spec and Lonnie.
But the point's the same. If a kid is ON this list, that's different from not being on it. Hultzen is on it. Pike is not on it. The top-100 list is an objective* metric.
Maurer, Pike, Sanchez and Gohara are indeed very exciting prospects. But the Big Four are on the verge of becoming impact pitchers in the major leagues. The Big Four are much, much more than blue-chip prospects; they're ML-ready elites. They are one biscuit short of being worth $50M+ apiece.
We're not countering Spec; we all know what he means when he (and G) say don't you go undersellin' Tyler Pike.