Sprouts: New Blood, New Page, Cubs Best, Fister Fallout, Lonnie and Clint
By Wally Fish
This week’s edition is a bit of a mixed bag. Naturally it features a couple of links to various MiLB related articles, but it also contains a few site related announcements.
To kick things off I wanted to formally welcome the newest member of the Seedlings to Stars team. Joseph Werner comes to us with plenty of online writing experience. He has his own baseball site, Release Points, and will also be published in the fall issue of The Baseball Research Journal. An engineer by trade, he naturally brings analysis and research elements to the table, but I think you also enjoy his writing style and his ability to write many different kinds of columns. I’m very excited to welcome him to the S2S staff and know that he will be a valuable asset to our site – and the FanSided MLB team as a whole. Joseph’s first article will appear in the next couple of days once he gets through our network’s setup and “orientation” process.
Next up I wanted to point out that I have created page dedicated to our prospect rankings, though judging by our site analytics many folks have found this addition to the site already. This page will provide links to each of Nathaniel’s Top-100 prospect write ups and will be updated daily as they the articles are published. Not only does it provide easy access to each of the Top-100 articles, it also presents them in an easy to view list and will further serve as a historical/archival tool for S2S readers and staff alike.
Right now I just have the 2012 rankings linked on their own sub-page, but at some point in the coming week or so I plan on creating a sub-page for Nathaniel’s 2011 Top-100 list that was published over on Call to the Pen last year. As we go along I will also be linking to other prospect/ranking content that we do, as I am sure we will have some team-based rankings and other features that will be a natural fit for these pages.
Whatever we wind up doing, you will be able to find it all under the “Prospect Rankings” heading located in our sites toolbar under our logo and banner ad.
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Cubbies Crib’s resident MiLB expert Luke Blaize recently revealed his choices for the Cubs Farm System All Stars. If you follow the minors and prospects on a “casual” level you may not be all that familiar with a lot of the guys selected, but that’s all the more reason to check it out, isn’t it? Luke’s choice for the 1B slot is a player that has become a bit of a favorite here on S2S as he’s a long time minor leaguer who more than earned the 20 game audition the Cubs gave him with a truly spectacular year in Triple-A. I’m not going to tell you his name because I want you to check out Luke’s column, but as a little hint, this player has received a fair amount of pub here on Seedlings to Stars in the last several months.
Clipped from: cubbiescrib.com (share this clip)
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On Motor City Bengals, Chris Hannum, wishes that the Doug Fister deal would have been structured differently. He correctly surmises that the Tigers could have used Chase Ruffin in the playoffs. Though after watching parts of the series, I think Detroit needed quite a bit more than just a reliever.
Clipped from: motorcitybengals.com (share this clip)
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When it comes to following the prospects of your favorite team, it’s easy to build them up into something more than they really are. We all want our team’s top prospects to develop into superstars and the fans of the Cleveland Indians are no different. That’s why it is so refreshing to find a team-based writer who is realistic about one of their team’s top-prospects. In this case the writer is Ed Carroll and the prospect is Lonnie Chisenhall.
Clipped from: deepleftfield.com (share this clip)
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Speaking of loving up your favorite team’s prospects, Michael Engel published a superb article on Royals 1B Clint Robinson. While most Kansas City fans aren’t delusional about what he has to offer, there is no doubt that Clint is currently in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Clipped from: kingsofkauffman.com (share this clip)
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