Monday, January 22, 2018

Who Needs Hot Stove Talk When It's Officially Prospect Season?


Okay, so admittedly I am being extremely sarcastic here with the blog post title. Of course we all need and want that big hot stove story to break, even if it is JD Martinez heading to the Boston Red Sox for an exuberant amount of money for probably far too long, but there are still a lot of us that are more inclined to read about the prospects as the calendar inches closer to February. I know we used to run Prospects Month here on the blog during the month of February, something I worked on off-and-on for like two months prior to February and all month long during February, so you know I am excited about a couple key sources of prospects information releasing their respective Top Prospects lists for the 2018 season. Baseball America released all 100 of their top prospects today while Keith Law released half his list and we will take a look at both lists here in this blog post. For the complete lists head over to Baseball America and Keith Law respectively.

Let's start with Baseball America since they released all 100 of their prospects all at once this morning. The Yankees had a total of six prospects in the Top 100 this season including Gleyber Torres (6th overall), Estevan Florial (38th overall), Justus Sheffield (41st overall), Miguel Andujar (59th overall), Albert Abreu (77th overall) and Chance Adams (81st overall).


I hate that Shohei Otani is considered a rookie and a prospect on this list, and by the way he is ranked 2nd overall, but I get it I guess. Meanwhile the Atlanta Braves outfield prospect Ronald Acuna is the top prospect in all of baseball according to BA while there are a few familiar and notable names to mention on the list including Vlad Guerrero Jr. (3rd ranked overall with the Toronto Blue Jays), Bo Bichette (8th overall and son of former MLB star Dante Bichette with the Toronto Blue Jays), Fernando Tatis Jr. (9th overall with the San Diego Padres), Jorge Mateo (64th overall and former Yankees farm hand traded for Sonny Gray to the Oakland Athletics), Jorge Guzman (87th overall and former Yankees farm hand traded to the Miami Marlins for Giancarlo Stanton), and Dustin Fowler (88th overall and former Yankees farm hand traded to the Oakland Athletics for Sonny Gray).

Meanwhile Keith Law released his 51-100 top prospects for the 2018 season and the Yankees that made the list were Miguel Andujar (54th overall), Freicer Perez (73rd) and Albert Abreu (99th overall). Law expects to release the rest of his Top 100 list tomorrow so check back for that! Even after trading away all the prospects the Yankees did in the Giancarlo Stanton and Sonny Gray deals the team is still stacked, and that is scary for the rest of the league in my opinion.