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Baseball America's Top 10 Mariners Prospects

I don't know if we're the intended audience for this sort of thing. By and large, we're already familiar with the good players in our system, since we haven't had anything else interesting on which to focus over the past eight months. Nevertheless, the wise and vitreous Conor Glassey has come out with his list of the top 10 Mariners prospects for Baseball America, and I think it's worth your taking a look. (h/t JY)

I'll try not to spoil too many of the surprises, but I will take this opportunity to urge all of you to remember the name Johermyn Chavez. Chavez turns 22 in January and is a long way away from the Majors, but one absolutely must bear in mind that Brandon Morrow wasn't traded for Brandon League straight-up. There was a young prospect who came over as well, and the prospect's stock is only higher now than it was when the Mariners got him.

Does Chavez have tremendous bust potential? He most certainly does, and his 2010 numbers were inflated by hitting in High Desert, where games are played at an elevation that half the world away is referred to as the Death Zone. But for those of us who are frustrated with League's lack of progression, Chavez kind of gives the trade another chance.

The rest, I'll leave up to you to peruse. All prospect lists are subjective and there's no way of knowing whether Taijuan Walker is actually a better prospect than, say, Mauricio Robles, but worry less about the rankings and more about the information and the chance to discuss.

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Comments

Personally, I can't wait to see Ichiro as the M's DH in 2014.
The list really showcases the talent dropoff.

When Pineda and Ackley join the M’s next year our minor leagues are going to be pretty thin on elite talent once again. We’ll definitely need a strong draft this spring. It’s a shame we didn’t sign Felipe Lopez for a week like the Red Sox to get a sandwich pick too. Seems too good to be true for them.

You're forgetting the #2 pick in next year's draft. That should be elite talent.

Hooray for being terrible this year!

At this point, either Rendon, Cole, or Purke.

All would be awesome.

Cole!
We could have him be teammates with Brandon Maurer whom he went to high school with and it would be weird!

I may be more partial to Purke at the moment though. We need some left-handers.

Purke is certainly a better fit for the park, but I want Cole just so he can be the anti-Jeff Clement
Wasn't Ackley the anti-Jeff Clement?
Gerrit Cole goes to UCLA
Pittsburgh's need for pitching is so acute that they might pick Cole or Purke over Rendon if those pitchers' stock rises a little bit.

It would be nice to draft a position player.

Could be.

But they also drafted an awful lot of pitchers this year.

Didn't our Minor league teams win 7 out of 9 possible championships?

Jack Z was in Everett a couple times checking out the Short season A guys and I know he keeps an eye on all levels. We may not have a lot of names that people have heard of coming down the pipes, but the overall talent level coming through the minors is much better. If our minor League teams are doing better now, then even if we don’t have a ton of STARS coming up, we can have people who can hit and field and pitch at least at replacement level or a little better.

Building from the ground level up was something that Z preached. Hopefully we don’t end up trading the entire farm system for someone that will only help us in the short term. I would rather know that we have good guys coming up for the next few years than trade a pile now to try and get to the WS this year.

No, but eight of nine teams went to the playoffs.

We only won league championships in the PCL and the Northwest League.

We will graduate Ackley and Pineda most likely. But several players in the system could vault up the rankings and the addition of a #2 pick will automatically give us a player most likely thought of as on of the top prospects in baseball.

A player like Pimental has the potential to be a top-10 prospect. It’s just going to take some time.

Color me surprised by the Littlewood ranking.

Shiny new toy syndrome or is he really that good/the rest of the prospects that bad? Personally I’d have though Tenbrink would have made the back-end of the Top 10 over him, at least.

Same.

BA usually grades recent draft picks a little high but I’m kind of surprised given Conor’s SR of Littlewood that he ranked where he did.

No one is the least bit surprised at Ichiro!'s slotting at DH?

When I came back from the link I thought that would be a major topic of discussion. God, we’ll be young next year.

At this point, people usually post the projected 2009 lineup from 2005 or something.

Where Clint Nageotte is coming off of three straight All-Star game appearances.

That's just Nageotte going to happen.
And perhaps other such speculation should be Feierabanned.
I wish I hadn't forgotten how to pronounce his name.
This surprises me a bit.

I can’t see Ichiro being happy with just being a DH.

I think BA is having a little fun

by teasing us for our bad run of light-hitting DH’s and letting us know we are doomed to never have a real one again.

Its nice to see that in 2014...

They predict that Hernandez will be happy, as opposed to descansado.

I just remembered that Carlos Triunfel exists.
Didn't he used to be Carlos Triunfel?
"You used to be Mel Clark!"

“Yeah, I used to be.”

fuck that guy
Vitreous Glassey cracked me up. Well played.

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