Last edited by OnBaseMachine; 10-16-2008 at 03:27 PM.
Brandon Larson came from a top program. His coach at LSU said he was better than Albert Belle when he coached him. There have been plenty of players with top notch pedigrees and have from great pedigrees that have failed. Im not saying that Alonso will be a failure but I don't rank him high until he proves it in the minors.
Kevin Goldstein of BP loves Soto. It wouldn't surprise me if he has Soto #1, but I still think he'll put Alonso #1 and Soto #2. Goldstein is also a Frazier fan too but I fully expect Soto to be #1/2 on BP. I'm not 100% sure about Baseball America. They are huge fans of five tool players like Stubbs. IIRC in a chat a while back they all but confirmed Alonso will be ranked #1 on their Reds list. That leads me to believe they'll decide between Stubbs and Soto for number two.
I seem to recall BA (maybe in a chat concerning the individual league prospects list) suggesting that Soto ranks behind a number of others, like Valaika, Francisco. Perhaps I'm not remembering accurately. Soto is a good prospect, but some of the posters here may have a slightly inflated view.
Daryl Thompson and Kyle Lotzkar will probably rank in the 6-10 area. Lotzkar has true TOR talent, his stuff is that good. He's got three potential plus pitches. Right now he just needs to work on his control and he's got plenty of time to do that. He doesn't turn 19 until next week.
I went with Stubbs because all reports agree his defense is outstanding in a critical defensive position and his hitting has held up or improved as he moved up in levels. He's the nearest to being ready - as soon as mid '09.
I think for future polls on this the list of options should be longer to include folks such as Duran, yorman, D Thompson,Josh Roenicke, Kyle Lotzkar, Devin Mesoraco, Juan Francisco, Zach Stewart, Zach Cozart, Travis Wood, Matt Maloney, Shaun Cumberland, etc. Thanks for getting this going again,.
And before we get too far the question of whether Homer still qualifies should be settled.
Depends who you ask at BA. Jim Callis has said you could make a real convincing argument that Soto is the Reds best prospect. Others may not be so sure, but the league prospects lists are a crapshoot at times, especially in the case of a guy like Soto, who some managers in the league may not have seen or only seen once. The Midwest League list was compiled by talking with 8 of the mangers in the league, well for all we know, 4 of those managers didn't see Soto at all this year due to scheduling and his arrival to Dayton.
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |