IBC

1- Matt Wieters
2- David Price
3- Jason Heyward
4- Neftali Feliz
5- Travis Snider
6- Madison Bumgarner
7- Lars Anderson
8- Buster Posey
9- Tommy Hanson
10- Rick Porcello
11- Tim Beckham
12- Colby Rasmus
13- Carlos Santana
14- Josh Vitters
15- Justin Smoak
16- Fernando Martinez
17- Eric Hosmer
18- Andrew McCutchen
19- Brett Wallace
20- Brett Anderson
21- Derek Holland
22- Carlos Triunfel
23- Logan Morrison
24- Trevor Cahill
25- Desmond Jennings
26- Tim Alderson
27- Matt Laporta
28- Brian Matusz
29- Cameron Maybin
30- Dexter Fowler
31- Mike Stanton
32- Jose Tabata
33- Wade Davis
34- Angel Villalona
35- Jarrod Parker
36- Gordon Beckham
37- Martin Perez
38- Pedro Alvarez
39- Elvis Andrus
40- Chris Tillman
41- Jordan Walden
42- Jordan Zimmermann
43- Brett Cecil
44- Mike Moustakas
45- Alcides Escobar
46- Austin Jackson
47- Jeremy Hellickson
48- Jason Donald
49- Jeremy Jeffress
50- Daryl Jones
51- Tyler Flowers
52- Michael Bowden
53- Michael Inoa
54- Kyle Blanks
55- Wilmer Flores
56- Aaron Hicks
57- Aaron Poreda
58- Adam Miller
59- Christian Friedrich
60- Carlos Carrasco
61- Nick Weglarz
62- Nick Adenhart
63- Ben Revere
64- Michael Main
65- Freddie Freeman
66- David Huff
67- Jordan Schafer
68- James McDonald
69- Matt Latos
70- Taylor Teagarden
71- Angel Salome
72- Chris Nelson
73- Matt Dominguez
74- Jhoulys Chacin
75- Daniel Schlereth
76- Yonder Alonso
77- Max Ramirez
78- Reid Brignac
79- Andrew Lambo
80- Chris Perez
81- Nick Hagadone
82- Kyle Skipworth
83- Jesus Montero
84- Dominic Brown
85- Julio Borbon
86- Mat Gamel
87- Ethan Martin
88- Gorkys Hernandez
89- Drew Stubbs
90- Junichi Tazawa
91- Gerardo Parra
92- Jake Arrieta
93- Greg Halman
94- Daniel Bard
95- Andrew Brackman
96- Jason Castro
97- Jeff Locke
98- Jay Jackson
99- JP Arencibia
100- Michael Taylor

Rays

2. David Price
11. Tim Beckham
12. Colby Rasmus
24. Trevor Cahill
38. Pedro Alvarez
61. Nick Weglarz
81. Nick Hagadone
91. Gererdo Parra

How does Beau Mills not even make the Indians top 10? What did Brad Mills do to you Kieth?

Still drinking the Chris Nelson coolaid... Law is a crackpot. And Tazawa at 90? Yeesh!

16- Fernando Martinez
35- Jarrod Parker
37- Martin Perez
46- Austin Jackson

At least Keith Law is brining his own opinion to the table. I respect him for not being John Sickels. That being said, there's a reason Keith Law writes for ESPN and is not a high ranking front office executive.

I'll take Sickels over Law in a heartbeat when it comes to prospects. Anyone who puts Chris Nelson or Tazawa in a top 100 should have his keyboard taken away.

I'm saying he's an idiot - but he brings another perspective.

You want to be John Sickels? Start a website, just read BA and BP, and then randomly overrate one guy per team by saying, "...just my gut, but he's going to be a good one."

ESPN dropped this guy after 10 minutes for BA once they realized who he was, and then he openly campaigned on his website that he'd LOVE to go back to ESPN...it was, uh, awkward.

I'd rather see good information rehashed than flat out ridiculous information.

That said, neither should be taken seriously. it's essentially a debate between whish is worse, the smell of shit or the smell of vomit. Either way it freakin stinks.

Phillies are well represented.

I don't think Tazawa at 90 is unreasonable at all. As hyped as he is, and the ceiling that enough scouts seem to think he has to get that many teams interested in him, along with the concerns that maybe he isn't so good, and I think 90 is just about the right spot for him. Plus I got ANOTHER top 10 prospect, sweet!

18. Andrew McCutchen
23. Logan Morrison
27. Matt LaPorta
60. Carlos Carrasco (WTF?)
62. Nick Adenhart

If Tazawa had any experience in the Japanese majors, then such a ranking would seem reasonable. But the industrial league is a very far cry from NPBL. there were a lot of teams interested, certainly, but when you look at the amount of money he got at his age on the free market... I don't see that adding up to the type of excitement that would make a guy an instant top 100 prospect.

We aren't talking top 10, top 25, or even top 75. Tazawa got a $6 million major league deal, which is better than any pitcher out of the draft did. At 22 he's basically a college senior, and the Industrial Leage is certainly comparable to NCAA (though definitely lower end). If he were a senior draft pick out of a mediocre college with the numbers he put up you wouldn't be bitching about 90 at all.

Defintely a shit list,

Braves got a couple though,
7. Lars Anderson
19. Brett Wallace
42. Jordan Zimmerman
49. Jeremy Jeffress
64. Michael Main

Tazawa got a 3yr, 3.3m contract, I don't know where you're getting $6m from.
Yup, Tazawa got a lot more than any SP draftee did (though it was a pretty soft draft for SP). He also had 30 potential teams to bid on him, instead of just one. Look at the guys ranked around him, do you think a single one of those guys wouldn't get a lot more money today or even out of the draft as a signing bonus if 30 teams could bid on them instead of just one? Hell, Kelly got $3m from the same organization and he's only 18 and has a lot further to go. I guarantee he didn't even get a sniff for this list.
Although when considering bonus money, arguably, any draftee is going to get $250k/yr minimum in those first three seasons in the bigs, so you could make a case for reducing tazawa's comparative bonus by that. because it's not guaranteed money I don't think that's a great argument, but it's something to think about.
Saying the industrial leagues are comparable to NCAA is silly. Part of the issue around Tazawa is that there is no direct frame of reference for the conversion he's making.
Tazawa got on the list because there's a mystique around Japanese players. Plain and simple.
I hope I'm wrong and he turns out to deserve that ranking, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Certainly not the order I'd put them in, but whatever:

14- Josh Vitters
22- Carlos Triunfel
29- Cameron Maybin
33- Wade Davis
40- Chris Tillman
51- Tyler Flowers
54- Kyle Blanks
69- Matt Latos
78- Reid Brignac
93- Greg Halman
98- Jay Jackson

I've seen a bunch of different bonus figures. There are also strong reports that he turned down more money elsewhere to go to the Red Sox, so dollar for dollar bonus talk is probably not that relevant. I'm curious who in the 91-150 range you think is so much better than Tazawa that they got slighted and all that?

The contract (editted from bonus) was $3.3m. There were reports early in the bidding of offers of $6m, but that wa likely stuff 'leaked' by Tazawa's agent. What I read after the bidding was that the highest other offer was $4m.
With 30 teams able to bid on him.
Having only seen 1-100 on law's list, I can only comment on those, but I'd put every player who is below Tazawa, ahead of him. The only player on the list off the top of my head who I would definitely put behind him is... well, I'm sure you can guess that one

That's the problem with the proliferation of sabermetrics, everyone thinks they know everything now. Considering all available information including the number of teams interested in signing him and the fact that he was signed by a team with a pretty damn good record of knowing which prospects suck and which ones don't justifies the ranking of 90 alone. Since we have no other information or frame of reference, just go with that. Gerardo Parra, Jay Jackson, Justin Locke, and Daniel Bard are certainly not better prospects than Tazawa, Greg Halman strikes out more than once per game, JP Arencibia is only a guy if he sticks at C (not sure if he's still having defensive questions), I'm not competent to judge Castro since he's a Stanford guy and I'm biased, and Andrew Brackman has so many question marks he might as well be Sidd Fynch. I'll grant that Arrieta, Taylor, and probably Castro are clearly better prospects, but Tazawa at 90 is not a list ruining pick. How about Jeremy "I love drugs both performance enhancing and not" Jeffress at 49, or Martin Perez at 37 ahead of much more proven guys like Hellickson, Bowden, Carrasco and Poreda? How about Desmond Jennings who's had all of 683 AB in 3 minor league seasons at 25? You want to quibble about guy 90?

Who's quoting sabermetrics? Just going off of the opinions of people who know a buttload more about prospects than Law it seems ridiculous.
I picked out Nelson and Tazawa as examples. Nelson, because he's a running joke around here and Tazawa because of the Japanese Mystique. Sure, there are other bad decisions in the list, there are a lot of them, that's why we seem to make jokes about Law every year. if anything, those other bad decisions make the Tazawa placement seem even more suspect, if he's making all these other ridiculous decisions, how can you buy into Tazawa? no way in hell does he make BA's list. Callis said he'd be 7th in the Sox top 10, right behind Kelly and even as a Sox homer, I don't see more than maybe 4 guys (tops) making the list out of Boston.
You seem to be hanging your hat for Tazawa on his contract (which you mistakenly thought was $6m) and the scouting reports. The scouting reports have been mixed 9some have already called him a likely middle reliever) and the contract is simply not comparable to draft bonuses since he was on an open market and the drafted players weren't.

I'm hanging my hat on hype, especially because the Boston Red Sox are not an organization that just jumps at hype. Junichi Tazawa is the agreed best ever to do this, since no one of note has done it before. That he's doing this ruffled some feathers means that he matters. I mentioned sabermetrics because since Moneyball came out and was bashed by supposed experts who were then proven wrong over and over and over (and over and over and over, etc...) again, it's created hundreds and thousands of internet posters who declare with no direct knowledge that someone sucks or doesn't. He's probably not Daisuke, but he has as good a chance of being useful as anyone else around him. The 90th prospect on a top 100 list probably has a less than 15-25% chance at hitting (I don't have the time to go through past lists right now to confirm this but I'm probably being generous). We're talking about a 22 year old on a major league contract starting off in AA who got major hype from people paid to know about baseball, 90 is a very reasonable ranking. The only way rating another poster's rating somebody at 90 is egregious is if they are out of your top 200 because prospect lists are so malleable. I sincerely doubt you can come up with 150 better prospects than Junichi Tazawa let alone 200.

Where would you rank Athletics righthander Michael Inoa, White Sox third baseman/outfielder Dayan Viciedo and Red Sox righty Junichi Tazawa on your Top 100 Prospects list?

Rob Dorsey
Silver Spring, Md.
On my personal Top 50 in the Handbook, Inoa was the only one of the three to make the cut, checking in at No. 50. He has tremendous upside as a 16-year-old who's 6-foot-7, 205 pounds and already touches 94 mph, but he's also so raw and has so much to prove that I couldn't rank him higher.

Viciedo nearly made my Top 50, and I'll rank him in the 51-60 range when the BA editors get together to hash out the Top 100 list in the spring. He has huge power and will be nearly big league-ready as a 20-year-old this year, though his conditioning and the sketchy track record of Cuban defectors are concerns.

Tazawa is intriguing but I wouldn't include him among the 100 best prospects in baseball yet. He has the potential to have two or three plus pitches with command, and he might be a mid-rotation starter. But he also might max out as a setup man, and we'll see have to see how he adapts to a slightly larger baseball, which has given Daisuke Matsuzaka problems at times.

Hanging your hat on hype? Well THAT sounds like a great idea... especially since the hype around him isn't that great.
The hype on him is largely because of what his coming over means for the MLB/NPBL relationship. Just because he's the first guy to come over this way doesn't mean it's because he's that good, it's more likely to be a reflection of determination and finding a loophole in the system. In fact, ti's pretty much a lock that he's not that good based on he mixed scouting reports and that he didn't get more money (or receive offers much higher than what he got).
You screwed up and thought he got $6m, that'll throw anyone off. He got $3.3 on the open market, largely because he's close to a finished product, NOT because he's a great talent. Think of it, the Sox, who saw this guy in 20 starts, are according to you very good talent evaluators and who have moeny to burn, only offered him $3.3m. I think you got thrown off by the $6m and now you're grasping at straws and pulling up whatever you think will distract me from the issue that Tazawa doesn't belong in a top 100 list because you don't want to admit you screwed up and that based on the current information, your initial assessment was wrong. Now you're essentially saying there isn't much difference between prospect #100 and #200, which, frankly, is ridiculous. That's like saying there isn't much difference between prospect #3 and prospect #7 in a team's top 10.
You were misinformed. Accept it and move on.

47- Jeremy Hellickson
48- Jason Donald
66- David Huff
76- Yonder Alonso

RedSox wrote:Anyone who puts Tazawa in a top 100 should have his keyboard taken away.

Dodgers wrote:RedSox trades Carlos Quentin, Carlos Santana, Anthony 7-Rizzo, to Giants for Nick Markakis, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Junichi 8-Tazawa,

Just terrific stuff.

Athletics wrote:

RedSox wrote:Anyone who puts Tazawa in a top 100 should have his keyboard taken away.

Dodgers wrote:RedSox trades Carlos Quentin, Carlos Santana, Anthony 7-Rizzo, to Giants for Nick Markakis, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Junichi 8-Tazawa,

Just terrific stuff.

I stand by it. Tazawa was a side piece in the deal and ranking him where he did was sheer guesswork on Law's part. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There was nothing to justify ranking Tazawa where he did at that time.