Then I took off my hat and said imagine that, me working for you...
Minor League Top Prospect Lists are "en fuego" these days, with about 4-5 that I know of having come out in the last month or so. I don't exactly have time to digest every single one of them, but I wanted to make a few points of interest to Cub fans.Aaron Gleeman wrote an insightful article for Baseball Primer with his Top 50 prospect list. I'm not going to get into the details, but as you can see, he lists Hee Seop Choi as his # 16 prospect in the minors. Even though Aaron shows some interesting tendencies in his rankings, his writeup on Choi is pretty positive - in case anyone out there isn't sold on him yet.
Other than Choi, no Cub made Aaron's list.
The folks over at Baseball Prospectus released their top 40 list the other day as well. Their list is a compilation of the lists of a number of the guys who write for BP, so it's not just one man's grand stand against the world - it takes into account a number of different perspectives. Well, I don't know about that, but it takes into account a number of different perspectives of guys who all think alike in the first place, so I'm not sure what that gets us.
In any event, BP lists Choi as their #7 prospect in all of baseball. It's worth noting that 2 of their top 5 are Hideki Matsui and Jose Contreras, so without those two, Choi would presumably be #5 on their list. This is completely unsurprising.
Here's the surprising, even shocking, part: Brendan Harris is listed as their #18 prospect.
In all of baseball.
Yikes. I like Harris as much as anyone and even wrote in my top 30 that I thought he didn't get enough respect from some people out there - hence my ranking of him at #5 in the Cub system. Obviously, I think very highly of Harris and think that his numbers and what I've heard about him project him to be a very good ball player.
But is he in the top 20 of ALL OF BASEBALL?
In their defense, BP suggests that Harris' numbers are eerily similar to another 3B who put up solid, if unspectacular numbers in the minors before busting onto the Major League scene in a big way a couple of years ago: Albert Pujols. All Pujols has done is put up two of the greatest years any player has ever had in their first two years. And then numbers seem to bear this out a little bit - Pujols jumped from A ball, while Harris played a little AA last year - but both had solid power, but not alot of HRs, high walks, good average, played a corner IF position, etc. So maybe there's more to it than we thought?
Or maybe there isn't. I ask the following: (1) How often does a guy go from less than 20 HRs in the minor to 35 HRs in his first year in the bigs? If we did a little research, wouldn't we be able to find about 50 guys who DIDN'T do what Pujols did? (2) Does anyone out there really believe that Pujols is as young as he says he is? I don't think Harris is really 25, but secretly masquerading through the Cubs system as a 22 year old. (3) Will Harris even get the chance next year? One of the big reasons Pujols got a chance to do what he did was that he was promoted to the Cards AAA team at the end of the year for the playoffs and he hit very very well there. Then in Spring Training, he continued to hit lights out - then and only then did LaRussa and the rest of the Cards braintrust decide that he would make the team. Harris wasn't even invited to Spring Training by the Cubs this year and likely will return to the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx for at least a half season.
Of course, BP doesn't think Harris will go hit 35 homeruns this year, they just think he's a sleeper. And I can't say as I disagree with that as a proposition. But the #18 prospect in all of baseball? Hmm.
One final thought. Baseball America is publishing their list of the Top 10 Prospects in each organization for the NL Central right now, and the Cubs Top 10 will be up on the web on Friday. However, the print copy is already out and BA thinks so highly of Harris that they rank him the #9 prospect in the CUB SYSTEM.
Now I don't necessarily think that BA is right either - I wrote in my report on Harris that part of the reason he doesn't get as much "pub" as other prospects is that he doesn't have that one outstanding tool -- and we all know how much Baseball America likes "tools." But to me, Harris can flat hit and that's better than any tools I've ever seen.
So in the end, I think Harris is a great prospect. I think he's better than the #9 prospect in the Cubs system. I think he'll probably have a very solid year and over a full year will probably hit 20 HRs and have a .900+ OPS for the second year in a row.
But can I definitively say that he's one of the top 20 prospects in the game today? I don't think that I can - I think this is just an instance where the BP guys are focusing too heavily on their love affair with OBA. I love it too, but it can't be the only thing that one looks at. Sure the Pujols parallel is nice, but who actually believes it? He's a great prospect, but #18 is too high.
I'll give some pub to a website called "The Minors First" that has it's own top 100 list out. Most of their rankings seem pretty solid - and they have Harris at #50. Seems about right to me.
Let me know where you think Harris should be, both in the Cubs system and overall. Email me here.
