Baseball America has published its annual assessment of the Cape Cod Baseball League’s top professional prospects from the 2007. I read it and agreed with many and questioned a few.
Check out the league’s 2007 all-league team as well.
Even more interesting to me is how directly Baseball America signals the dominance of the Cape league over all other summer collegiate leagues. Aaron Fitt and John Manuel of Baseball America assessed 18 different summer leagues, but singles out “the unparalleled Cape Cod League.”
The Northwoods League, Clark Griffith League, New England Collegiate Baseball League and the Central Illinois Collegiate League are also singled out for attracting talent.
Here is Baseball America’s top 30 list for the Cape league:
- Aaron Crow (duh)
- Yonder Alonso
- Kyle Gibson
- Christian Friedrich
- Robert Stock (really?)
- Scott Green
- Dennis Raben (yup)
- Luke Burnett (ye-yeah)
- Ryan Perry
- Andy Oliver
- Shooter Hunt (don’t agree)
- Gordon Beckham
- Conor Gillaspie
- Alex White
- James Darnell (told you)
- Allan Dykstra (monster)
- Buster Posey (hmm)
- Grant Green
- Reese Havens
- Aaron Shafer
- Brett Jacobson
- D.J. Mitchell (agree)
- Jason Castro
- Brad Boxberger
- Brandon Crawford
- Shane Peterson
- David Adams
- Kyle Weiland
- Jeremy Bleich
- Dan Brewer (really? Not higher?)
I don’t have access to Baseball America, but this list makes me want to do my own list. It’s not really that hard to do a top-30 prospects list from the Cape. It seems that Baseball America put some names on there that people expected to see without justifying it with their actual performance. Where’s Sean Ochinko? Kevin Hoef? Jermaine Curtis?
I’d have to think about this more, but I am surprised and would like to see the full report.
all good players in the top 30 but as a new fan of the cape league i have to ask. is a cape league championship the ultimete goal of a season or are there more considerations to be dealt with? the chatham/yd series was suspect in a lot of ways. yes/no?
Missouri’s athletic site reprinted the full list, with scouting reports for each player.
http://mutigers.cstv.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/083007aae.html
It’s always weird to see a guy like Brandon Crawford, who hit .189, on the list, but that goes to show that stats mean less to scouts than they do to fans. Scouts still see the tools, even if the production isn’t there.
Corey Brown hit .192 for Chatham last year and was a first-round pick.
Fred Frank (interesting baseball name, see below) raises a thoughtful and provocative question. What is the ultimate goal of a season on the Cape? Is it for players to get noticed or to win a championship. I suspect players and parents answer that a little differently than organizational front offices.
Fred Frank was the name of an 1800s baseball player for the Cleveland Spiders. You are either a true fan of the game, a relative or just a coincidence.
Andrew, to your point on Kevin Hoef, he absolutely tore up the playoffs — leading in BA, OBP, and other categories.
http://www.howesportsdata.com/howesportsdata/stats/baseball/cape/88dailyp.txt
Do you really think Crow is the best in the league…Ynoder Alonso is by FAR the best pro-prospect. No question – a completely pur hitter to all fields and for power to all fields…You watch…he’s got a huge future…
I think we have to understand that that Aaron Fitt ranked the top “prospects” and not the “All League Team”. Robert Stock had a so-so season and perhaps gets more notarity than most others because of his age and early success but he simply projects as a big-league catcher and is considered among scouts as perhaps the best catcher on the Cape.
As far as the “goal of the season” on the Cape….Listen to the interviews on the Gatemen website with Head Coach Cooper Farris and GM John Wylde. They touch on this question in two different segments. Go over to the link I provided below and then click on these two segments:
1. “Do they leave better ballplayers?”
2. “That is that this is all about.”
http://www.gatemen.org/gatemenaudiovideo.shtml
If you don’t like Baseball America’s list of top pro prospects, perhaps you would prefer that of Baseball Prospectus. Bryan Smith of BP has posted a two-part list of their top pro prospects. Yonder Alonso is ranked #1 and Crow is ranked #4, which may please CapePhan.
I am a real fan of both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. I tend to lean a little toward the BP analysis on this one.
Both are subscriptions, but here is the BP prospects list in case you are interested.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6638
Adding on to my comment above, Bryan Smith over at Baseball Prospectus now has added a top 5 freshman list from the Cape. He also has a list he calls the “Next 10.) This is basically a list of top pro prospects for the 2009 draft.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=517
Buster Posey. NCAA player of the year… where was he on the cod list?