minor league reporting 2009

notice teams like Royals, Rays, O's and Marlins - all teams that are banking on youth movements - are in the bottom 1/2.

Surprised to see the Braves near the bottom. Maybe the player development people are so good at their job they get the young'uns graduated to the bigs before they can help the minor league clubs. (Freeman, Heyward, O'Ventbrel et al)

and as a J's fan i welcome their prospect's inability to raise their respective teams above 500. (to what i posted earlier)

well, there are only so many players that actually matter. it's a lot more important to the future of the braves that julio teheran is awesome than that gwinnett wins something.

the royals' youth movement has pretty much arrived (except for the pitchers, who haven't). hosmer/moustakas/giavotella won their double-a league last year and the royals' triple-a team won the pcl this year even with them gone. they're still waiting on pitchers montgomery and odorizzi and outfielders wil myers and lorenzo cain (who inexplicably hasn't gotten a callup). there's not much at the lower levels and doesn't really need to be since all the positions in kc are taken.

i may have mentioned this before, but the blue jays totally go out of their way to pick up canadian players, all other things being equal.

obviously a lot of minor leaguers are long shots or projects, but the adam loewens tend to end up in the toronto system. he was obviously a top prospect anyway, but i kind of wonder how much that weighed into their trade for lawrie.

aside from the recent Anthopolis years, i don't really think that's been the case.

oh, they don't necessarily pan out such that anyone would notice, but it's still pretty cool.

it's kind of like the dodgers taking mike piazza in the 62nd round as a favor, except with more toques and less bacne

i would believe it for sure with AA - but under Ricciardi... the howler monkeys on the Js message board were always going berzerk that he was overlooking quality Canadian player like Votto etc.

hmmm - maybe you're right - i found a list of Canadian minor leaguers from 2007. the J's were second only to the Brewers with 10.

Showing some preference for Canadian prospects makes sense, I'm not saying you pass up on top prospects to get them, but in terms of future marketability it's a good idea to target Canadian players. Not to mention that every Canadian baseball player probably grew up as a Jays (and Expos) fan and dreamed of playing for the Jays someday, maybe that's a factor too (the benefits of having only one (RIP Expos) MLB team for the entire country).

they also went against the grain of trying to have affiliates closer to home by switching out their new york-penn league team for vancouver. (they got stuck with las vegas at the end of the last triple-a musical chairs.)

i don't understand why someone (i.e. the jays) doesn't put a minor league team -- even a short-season club -- in montreal. there's an nypl team in vermont already, so the travel isn't prohibitive and it wouldn't honestly require much more than a glorified high school field. it's a big city with serious baseball history. baseball needs arrêt-courts.

or is it arrêts-court?

i don't speak spanish.

you guys