Once again, El Lefty Malo brings you the best of baseball and technology. We’ve vaulted into the year 2002 by adding nested comments, which, like the Astrodome, will always be cutting-edge stuff no matter how many roof panels cave in.
And all the better to compliment your fellow readers on their keen insight, so on your mark, get set, get nesty. More cool stuff to come in the next few weeks, too.
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Speaking of the future: In my last post I linked to minor-league dude John Sickels’s top-20 list of Giant prospects. Let’s dig into it some more.
No surprise to anyone who follows the Giant farm, the list is nearly bereft of near-term help for the big club. The top guy is Angel Villalona, whom Giants fans hope and pray will soon become the next Miguel Cabrera.
(By the by, Baseball Prospectus farmhound Kevin Goldstein tells me his Giants list comes next month and that Villalona is also #1 “by a wide margin.”)
Villalona’s sky-high ceiling — a 17–year-old as the consensus, not-even-close #1 pick — is cold comfort, considering that many other teams have top prospects ready now for the bigs (The Cubs’ Geovany Soto, Cincinnati’s Jay Bruce, Oakland’s Daric Barton). We’ll be lucky if Villalona makes the team before 2011.
The only Giant in Sickles’s top five who should see big-league action this year is Nate Schierholtz, and there are major questions if Nate’s batting eye and power will develop against big-league pitching.
As noted in the last post, Sickels likes Eugenio Velez but admits it’s sort of a man-crush on a guy who’s fun to watch run, the rest of his (questionable) skills be damned. Chris Haft says Velez could compete for the second-base job this year, but it’s a stretch. Barring a cascade of injuries, Velez will at best be a utility/pinch-runner guy, which would be great. If Rich Aurilia goes on the DL or is traded, Velez should be the first guy up.
The other players Sickels lists who might see major-league time in ‘08/’09:
Jose Capellan (#14), whom the Giants snagged in the Rule 5 draft, only because the team has to keep him on the big squad all year or send him back to Boston, where he never pitched above A ball. He’s a raw 21–year-old lefty and a longshot to stick.
John Bowker (#10), the 24–year-old outfielder who did little of note until he inexplicably busted out last year at double-A Connecticut, the place hitting prospects often go to die. I’d give him a decent shot to see some time in 2009.
The sleeper to make an impact is Tim Alderson, the first-round pick from last summer whom Sickels ranks #3. Again, it’s a longshot; he just turned 19 in November. But consider this: After 21 games in the minors, the 21–year-old Huston Street was in the A’s bullpen and closing games with authority.
More likely, the crop of promising youngsters at the low rungs won’t make an impact until 2011 or 2012. It makes you bang your head against the wall that the Giants didn’t start restocking the farm system a year or two earlier.
Here’s my best guess at the Fresno starting lineup to start the year:
C: Guillermo Rodriguez
1B: Travis Ishikawa
2B: Velez
SS: Ivan Ochoa
3B: Justin Leone
OF: Bowker, Schierholtz, Clay Timpner
SP: Sanchez, Begg, Pereira
