Top 100 Fantasy Prospects for 2012: 20-1
From Hisashi Iwakuma to Matt Moore.
Archive for Prospects
Prospect Drafting For Dummies
Some people love following prospects from the time the players are in high school and college to when they make it to the majors. I am not one of those people. It is important to have some idea of which prospects may have a impact in an upcoming fantasy baseball season. To keep the process simple every year, I create a combined ranking of different prospect rankings and merge them into one composite ranking. This year ranking ended using 7 different lists (I waited until Baseball America released their list to make it complete). Seven minds are better than one, especially if the one mind is mine.
Darvish A Cut Above Other Japanese Imports
This past week, the Texas Rangers landed Japanese ace Yu Darvish for a cool $112 million. The right-hander’s virtues are apparent: he has what’s considered an ideal pitcher’s build (6-foot-5, 215 pounds), he throws 95 mph, and he thoroughly dominated the competition for the Pacific League’s Nippon Ham Fighters in his early-to-mid-twenties. The projection systems either like the 25-year-old (a 3.62 ERA and a 169/46 K/BB ratio from Dan Szymborki’s ZiPS) or want to propose cyber marriage (a 2.40 ERA and a 223/44 K/BB from Brian Cartwright’s Oliver).
But Darvish’s signing has also been met with some skepticism. Some starting pitchers coming from Japan to the U.S. have found success (Colby Lewis after initially bombing in the majors, Hiroki Kuroda), but many others have disappointed.
Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, Kaz Ishii, Hideki Irabu and Hideo Nomo all got lots of cash and press, but Dice-K is the only pitcher among that group to post a career adjusted ERA better than the league average in Major League Baseball (and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would say he has lived up to Boston’s $103 million investment). Critics say that for whatever reason — cultural adjustments, four days’ rest between starts instead of six, pitching backwards in a more fastball-heavy league, exhaustive workloads at a young age that eventually take a toll — Japanese pitchers haven’t lived up to the hype. What makes Darvish any different?
Noesi’s Path Easier in Seattle — For Now
For Hector Noesi, cracking the starting rotation with the New York Yankees looked like no easy task. Locked in a death match with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox for AL East supremacy, the Bombers aren’t in a position to give a second-tier prospect like Noesi a chance to prove his worth in 2012. At most, he figured to toil in middle relief while getting an occasional spot start, much like he did as a rookie this past year.
Noesi’s prospects of piling up important innings changed last week, however, as he was shipped to Seattle as part of the staggering Michael Pineda/Jesus Montero challenge trade. Noesi, 25 later this month, could also eventually be pushed out of the rotation picture with the M’s as higher-upside arms like Danny Hultzen, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker reach the majors. But for now, he has a good chance of winning a spot behind King Felix, Jason Vargas and Japanese import Hishashi Iwakuma. Noesi has garnered a reputation as a quality strike-thrower and will benefit from moving to Safeco Field, but he’ll have to prove he can miss bats with his four-pitch mix to merit consideration in most fantasy leagues.
Danny Hultzen, Fernando Martinez, Andrew Brackman: Prospect Chatter
In this edition…
How a Japanese pitcher could push back the No. 2 pick’s ETA, why F-Mart landed in the right place and whether a former first-rounder has any hope in a new org.
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