Friday, March 7, 2008
Twins Prospect Lists/Contest
Before we start today and I ask you to vote for the new SethSpeaks contest, I would like to ask you to click on this link and take the 10 seconds to Vote for Marisa. (you will need to then click on Click Here to Vote. She's a friend from work and would be an excellent representative!
Chris Coste went 1-2 yesterday for the Phillies and hit a two run homer against the Rays James Shields. To order Chris's book, click on the book's cover to the left side of this screen. It will be coming out March 18th. Get your copy reserved today!
I happened to listen to the Twins score their five first inning runs off of Daniel Cabrera yesterday. Delmon Young had a big two run single to right, his first of three hits on the day.
I was equally happy to see Chris Heintz go 3-3 as the O's DH.
The negative, although not surprising, was that Livan Hernandez gave up six runs (5 earned) on TEN hits and a walk in three innings. Ouch!
Doug Mientkiewicz played some 3B for the Pirates today after previously playing 1B and even some RF.
On Wednesday, with Pat Neshek on the mound, the Yankees used powerful lefty Greg Porter to pinch hit for Alex Rodriguez. Neshek dominated Porter. Yesterday Porter drilled a grand slam for the Yankees in the 8th inning of their game against the Reds... against Alexander Smit, who gave up the four runs on two hits and two walks in his inning.
The Marlins highest paid player in 2008 will be closer Kevin Gregg. He had an outing yesterday to forget... He worked the 5th inning and gave up back-to-back-to-back homers to Skip Schumaker, Joe Mather and Albert Pujols.
by the way, you may have heard... Francisco Liriano will make his first start for the Twins this afternoon against the Boston Red Sox. Hopefully it goes very well!
Yesterday, Aaron Gleeman completed his Top 40 Twins prospects list, and with it, I am now able to give you eight Twins prospects lists. I am not even going to do an "Average Ranking" or anything like that. I just want to present the information as it is.
I present this list to kick of the 2008 Prospect Watch Vote... You see on the left side of this screen that there are several links to Twins blogs and more, but there is also the Prospect Watch section that includes six Twins prospects. With the Twins Minor Leaguers set to report to camp today and their first official practice tomorrow (Saturday), I thought it would be a good time to start our vote for who will be in this year's Prospect Watch.
As in the past years, I will ask for you to E-Mail Me Your Vote for SIX Twins Prospects. Each person who submits their list of SIX Twins prospects that they would like me to follow on this page throughout the season will have their name put in a hat. The name that is pulled out of the hat will receive two Autographed Twins Prospect cards. Here are the rules:
A person can only vote for six names.
Only players in the below list can be voted for.
Note - if any of these players begin the season with the Twins, they will still be on the Prospect Watch, but once they reach a certain number of at bats or innings, they will be removed and replaced. If it is early in the season, the prospect who finished 7th will be added.
Don't feel that you have to go with the below rankings. Please vote for you who really are curious to follow.
I will accept votes through next Thursday (March 13) at 5:00 central time. (Next Friday, I will post the results of this vote.)
A little about each of these rankings. Here at SethSpeaks, I do two main Top 50 Twins Prospects Lists, one in early June, right before the draft, and one in September, at the conclusion of the minor league seasons and playoffs. I also do a pre-Spring Training updated Top 50, but not as in-depth. Aaron Gleeman does a great job with his list each spring. Josh Johnson ranked 55 players to accommodate the new Twins prospects that came over in the Santana trade. At Twinkie Town, I ran a Community Prospect list where I gave people a list of six to ten Twins prospects to vote for and we voted to a consensus on the Top 40 Twins prospects. When the Mets/Twins trade occurred, we went back and added the four Mets players and Glen Perkins. Generally, there were at least 60 votes before the winners were named. John Sickels re-ranked his Top 10 Twins prospects following the trade. I used Baseball America's Ask BA section where they were asked to re-rank both the Twins and Mets minor league prospects. LaVelle gave his Top 20 Twins prospect list about a month ago, after the trade.
I included Glen Perkins and Carlos Gomez. Both are likely not rookies in 2008 based on service time in the big leagues in 2007 (and 2006 in Perkins' case), but they are below the limits of 130 at bats and 50 innings pitched. However, I did remove Alexi Casilla from any lists he was included in. He has well more than the limit for at bats, so I couldn't justify him staying on this list.
So again, I'm simply asking to you E-mail me the names of the SIX Twins Prospects that you would like to see in the 2008 Prospect Watch.
| Twins Prospects | Seth Speaks | Aaron Gleeman | Josh Johnson | Twinkie Town | Travis Talks | John Sickels | Baseball America | LaVelle E Neal |
| Carlos Gomez | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 3 |
| Deolis Guerra | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Tyler Robertson | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| Anthony Swarzak | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 10 |
| Kevin Mulvey | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 8 | 7 |
| Trevor Plouffe | 6 | 15 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 | |
| Ben Revere | 7 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 6 |
| Phil Humber | 8 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 14 | |
| Glen Perkins | 9 | 4 | 10 | 5 | 7 | |||
| Jeff Manship | 10 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 5 | |
| Joe Benson | 11 | 14 | 12 | 18 | 10 | 4 | 4 | |
| Brian Duensing | 12 | 16 | 11 | 10 | 12 | |||
| Danny Valencia | 13 | 18 | 16 | 13 | 14 | 13 | ||
| Alex Burnett | 14 | 19 | 21 | 21 | 19 | |||
| Oswaldo Sosa | 15 | 12 | 17 | 15 | 15 | |||
| Wilson Ramos | 16 | 9 | 13 | 17 | 11 | 5 | 8 | |
| Chris Parmelee | 17 | 11 | 15 | 12 | 13 | 15 | ||
| Jason Pridie | 18 | 20 | 14 | 16 | 17 | 10 | 16 | |
| Erik Lis | 19 | 29 | 18 | 19 | ||||
| Deibinson Romero | 20 | 13 | 24 | 25 | 17 | |||
| Nick Blackburn | 21 | 26 | 20 | 14 | 16 | 3 | 11 | |
| Jay Rainville | 22 | 28 | 19 | 20 | 18 | |||
| Brock Peterson | 23 | 21 | 28 | 23 | ||||
| David Bromberg | 24 | 33 | 26 | 24 |
| Twins Prospects | Seth Speaks | Aaron Gleeman | Josh Johnson | Twinkie Town | Travis Talks | John Sickels | Baseball America | LaVelle E Neal |
| Mike McCardell | 25 | 22 | 29 | 29 | ||||
| Ryan Mullins | 26 | 17 | 34 | 32 | ||||
| Yohan Pino | 27 | 23 | 31 | 26 | ||||
| David Winfree | 28 | 27 | 25 | 31 | ||||
| Dustin Martin | 29 | 35 | 36 | |||||
| Juan Portes | 30 | 33 | ||||||
| Rene Tosoni | 31 | 30 | 37 | |||||
| Brian Dinkelman | 32 | 39 | 41 | |||||
| Kyle Waldrop | 33 | 32 | 35 | 33 | ||||
| Denard Span | 34 | 44 | 22 | 34 | 18 | |||
| Ozzie Lewis | 35 | 27 | 36 | |||||
| Brandon Roberts | 36 | 43 | 37 | 35 | ||||
| Danny Rams | 37 | 31 | 38 | |||||
| Michael Tarsi | 38 | 34 | ||||||
| Jose Mijares | 39 | 32 | 30 | |||||
| Angel Morales | 40 | 25 | 45 | |||||
| Matt Tolbert | 41 | 40 | 47 | 40 | ||||
| Dan Berlind | 42 | 36 | 54 | |||||
| Cole DeVries | 43 | 42 | ||||||
| Estarlin de los Santos | 44 | 38 | ||||||
| Jose Morales | 45 | 41 | 23 | 22 | ||||
| Brad Tippett | 46 | 52 | 39 | |||||
| Robert Delaney | 47 | 49 | ||||||
| Matt Macri | 48 | 37 | 44 | 27 |
| Twins Prospects | Seth Speaks | Aaron Gleeman | Josh Johnson | Twinkie Town | Travis Talks | John Sickels | Baseball America | LaVelle E Neal |
| Brian Buscher | 49 | 38 | 40 | 28 | ||||
| Drew Butera | 50 | |||||||
| Zach Ward | 51 | 30 | 43 | |||||
| Armando Gabino | 52 | 39 | ||||||
| Paul Kelly | 24 | |||||||
| Steven Tolleson | 42 | 50 | ||||||
| Anthony Slama | 46 | |||||||
| Rene Leveret | 48 | |||||||
| Matt Moses | 51 | 19 | ||||||
| Danny Rondon | 53 | |||||||
| Greg Yersich | 55 |
Sorry I couldn't get this all into one table. It would not work that way. But I think this still gives you a good idea of what the lists look like. Please feel free to leave comments below and again, E-Mail Me Your Six Twins Prospects.