Minor League News MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006
The Best of the Best in Minor League Baseball.
Boca Raton, FLA - This year, MLN celebrates the fourth anniversary of the best and biggest mid-season talent and movement ranking of the top players in minor league baseball by innovating the FAB50 to a whole new level for 2006.
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Of course, returning are both our Digital Trading Cards in our galleries and our FAB50 super screens with your favorite players.
You liked our big screen art last year and wanted more. This year we go even bigger!
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It is only fitting. 2006 has been a big year for talent development in minor league baseball.
Movement to the majors has been more fluid than in past years, with talents like Philadelphia's Ryan Howard breaking out of the normal vapor lock of green cap limits to advancement before Spring. Andy Marte traded tribes in 2006, ankling the Atlanta organization in favor to reignite his career in Cleveland with the Indians.
The Marlins may have been dissed by the major league media for dumping their high salary darlings, but minor league mavens marveled at their prodigious plucking of properties like Hanley Ramirez and Yusmeiro Pettit, both past FAB50 alums.
While we saw a lot of interesting young catchers in the early stages of the system in Spring, the drought in both expectional players at the position, and in places for them to go, continues. There are only four on the FAB50, with the first, the Oakland Athletics' Kurt Suzuki, appearing at No. 19.
How Our Movement Ranking Differs from a Talent Ranking
Forewarning to emailers and the blogosphere: This isn't the BA beauty fest. Our rankings sample player talent at mid-season, and plug it into the larger jigsaw puzzle of the opportunity to move forward in their organization or be traded to a club where they can advance.
You can be the number one pick in Baseball America's rankings, but it means nothing if you are stuck behind a healthy veteran player with a fat, long major league contract, or you play in the farm of a large club that prefers veterans but likes to keep healthy high-talent spare parts on the farm in reserve.
The MLN FAB50 represents players with exceptional chances to make it to a permanent major league career when we take the snapshot of the world of baseball around the All-Star break each year.
MLN spends the whole year accumulating information on the players who make up the FAB50 rankings, including input from scouts, trainers, general managers, owners, league presidents,
other players, and our corps of top freelance journalists who spend the year on the ground with these guys.
This is not a lemming list. Our takes are fresh, and our rankings are not used for bartering bats and arms between major league clubs. We have no vested interest in keeping any club or owner happy. We can call them like we see 'em.
For minor league fans, we offer you a who's who of players that you should watch move through your teams and leagues.
For hardcore baseball fans, major or minor, we guarantee that you will be shaking your head at one or more of our calls and utter something like 'no way that (expletive) is good enough to make it to the majors."
We would tend to agree. It's not always about good, but sometimes about good enough. To those of you who sent us those lovely flames last year telling us that Dioner Navarro and Ian Kinsler had no business being on a top fifty list, we invite you to look at where they are playing today. There are numbers beyond stats at play. Numbers which we try to capture in the MLN FAB50, a reality check on the ranking system.
Beyond the players' numbers, we study all of the angles, from depth charts to signing bonuses to the buzz inside the organization to find players who are both top talents, and who have the positive organization mojo to move into a career slot in the majors in the next twelve to fifteen months.
Variables that can affect rankings include:
- The Draft Bonus - Did you land a whopping signing bonus? That gives you a huge leg-up in the rankings. This is usually where we get a lot of 'This list sucks...' emails from readers who can't believe that we put Player X on the list and not their favored Player Y. Clubs try to cash in on their big gambles on players. Don't blame us... It's the system, man.
- The Sally Field of Dreams - Players move at the favor of their parent clubs. If you can't have them "really, really like [you]," then you can put up good numbers and still not advance.
- The Biig Trade - In 2005, Dioner Navarro was part of the Randy Johnson swap with the Yankees, Dodgers and D-Backs. The Dodgers very public commitment to his future weighed heavily in his ranking, even when his production numbers to the mid-season hardly screamed major league career. A number of player picks that get sniped about from our list watchers who email or flame us on blogs usually have to do with trades or likely trades that we hear about from the farm. Some pan out, as in the case of Navarro, while others don't. The don'ts generally don't make it back to the FAB50 without a killer followup season.
- The Career River - How mighty is your career river in your organization? If you play for clubs that need young talent, like the Marlins, you're in the stream as open as the mighty Mississipppi. If you're a position player for the Yankees behind Jeter, you're in a 1/2" piece of PVC pipe. (See: The Green Cap - Major BLOGS of Minor League News, April 6, 2006)
Based upon all of these variables, the kind of season that a player is having, and a few secret recipe variables, you'll see some players that are new to the list, and some stay.
The Minor League News FAB50 Farm System of the Year 2006
For the FAB50, we not only evaluate the talent, but the farm system itself. Farm systems get better and worse from year-to-year, a blend of the talent passing through and the management passing through.
Last year, our award went to the phenom-laden Boston Red Sox system. The Diamonbacks have the hottest talent with Stephen Drew and Carlos Quentin in the top five, but his year's farm honors go to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who topped our rankings with seven MLN FAB50 and Ones2Watch™ players. (See: Sidebar)
What's New for the FAB50 in 2006?
In our continuing effort to make the MLN FAB50 Baseball rankings better, we've taken feedback from both you, our readers, and our sources to create a better player survey.
- Full FAB50 Plus Expanded Ones2Watch™ - In 2006, we expand the FAB50 to include fifty players whom we think have the potential to make it to the majors within 12-15 months. Previously the "Freshman Forty" of the list were our Jr. Class with more than 15 months in development. They now become the twenty-five players of the expanded Ones2Watch list of potential players to make following FAB50 Baseball rankings.
- Three Strikes Rule - Players can only spend three seasons on the FAB50. If you have become stuck on the depth chart, you get sidelined by injury for a year, or your career sputters at the Triple-A level, you come off the rankings and the Ones2Watch for at least one year. We have taken players off the list for low performance this season, but multiple consecutive year players like the D-Rays BJ Upton have also disappeared.
- More Surveys - This year we handed out more surveys to experts in the field than ever before to increase our sampling of sentiment in organizations great and small. While they aren't the be-all, end-all of some other ranking systems, they give us insight into the thinking of various segments of the professional game.
- Beefier Team - Player connoisseur Lary Bump and veteran journalists Dan Hickling and Mike Scandura beef up the FAB50 editorial circle with a passion for picking players grounded in countless years covering minor leaguers. We've also beefed up the writing corps with player experts like C.J. Carlson, regulars like Jim Mandelaro and Jason Blasco, and more features by local writers who have on-the-ground time with the players.
Read beyond the top ten. You'll see the amazing and the improbable. Our favorite story is story of our oldest player on the FAB50, the Round Rock Express' Chris Sampson (22), which reads like a sequel to the Disney film, "The Rookie."
From this point on, FAB50 winners appearing in other articles in MLN publications will be honored with a tag indicating their FAB50 rank and a hot-link back to their FAB50 bio.
This year's number one player comes from the West, a Pacific Coast League prospect from the Scott Boras stable of players. His big brother, J.D., has been a big leaguer since 1998.
And the winners are...
