Top 100 Prospects, the Sox, and the Santana Deal

Kevin Goldstein over at Baseball Prosectus published his list of the Top 100 Prospects (subscription required) and there is great news for Sox fans. The Red Sox have the most prospects on the list with seven (the Rays and Braves were second with six; the Yankees had five). They also have a nice mix of high and low ranked, which indicates talent is dispersed throughout the various levels of the minor league system and will likely pay dividends over time. It is also heartening to see a healthy mix of positions. The Sox boast three pitchers (Buchholz, Masterson, and Bowden), two centerfielders (Ellsbury and Kalish), a shortstop (Lowrie) and a first basemen (Anderson).

I found the high ranking of Kalish (#60) a bit surprising. His performance last year at such a young age was clearly worthy of note. Scouts and quants alike love this kid. But, given that Oscar Tejeda, who did not make the list, arguably had a better offensive season (Kalish is supposed to be an outstanding defender, which I've not yet heard about Tejeda) and that Kalish had limited at-bats all in low-A, I expected Goldstein's enthusiasm to be more tempered (see, for example, Lars Anderson's ranking at #100).

If the list is any indiciation, the Rays may still have the best system as they have six prospects but five of those prospects are in the top 25.

Finally, these rankings tell us something about the Johan Santana trade. The Mets traded Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey, and Deolis Guerra. Both Gomez and Guerra made the list (Humber and Mulvey were likely ineligible but I doubt either would have made the list) but were ranked 65 and 79 respectively. If you look at some of the offers made by the Red Sox and Yankees, you realize how little the Twins received in return for Santana. Twins fans should be apoplectic that so much high level talent was on the table at one point yet they ended up with so little.