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I "get it" (obviously), but I don't get the lack of on-field respect for Josh Lueke. Including AFL, he faced 341 batters and struck out 106 of them. Walked 18. 18! A hard-throwing strikeout ace who's never wild? The only reason not to put him in a Top 10 is you think he'll get blackballed (which Z says he won't -- and the team is even giving him some public relations assistance ... but ... on Valentine's Day? huh?), yet he's even being left off Top 20s.
Funny, but even though I was on the side of thinking Z botched the handling (and that Baker was right to question), I'm putting him 4 or 5 and others are running him off the list altogether. I would have had him at 4 if G_Money hadn't convinced me that I was being too hard on Robles. Anyway, good to see a clear-headed analysis that has Lueke near the top -- you don't dominate advanced hitters and get squeezed out of the Top 10 by teenagers who have only faced teenagers.
Moving on . . .
James Jones: unlike Pimentel/EPeguero/Morban, etc. here is a guy who has actually played professional baseball at a meaningful level and has demonstrated the ability to take a base: 10 triples, 12 HR, 62 walks, and getting better as he goes along.
Nate Tenbrink: The more I look at what Tenbrink did, and how he consolidated it with a strong AFL, the more I like the guy. The 60 BB/87 K eye ratio and the 26 SB/3 CS stand out among our advanced hitters. And here's another guy with double-digit triples.
Vicente Campos is my new fascination, after being singled out for praise from Pedro Grifol. Struck out 59 in 57 innings in the Venezuelan Summer League (vs. 19 walks) at 17 and was the winning pitcher in 8 of 12 starts. Wouldn't mean much if not for Grifol's endorsement, but it's more of a track record than Taijuan Walker's got.
And, my usual plug for Tom Wilhelmsen: I get that the age thing makes him hard to place, but he was mowing them down until he ran out of gas in his last two outings in the AFL, and the only real question was whether he could get more advanced hitters out.