Black Betsy

Top 50 Prospects - AL Central Wrap Up

Baseball Prospectus published its list of the top 50 prospects for 2005. You don't need a subscription to access it, but I thought I would point out a couple of things on the list as it pertains to the AL Central. Here are the breakdowns by AL Central team:

Team	No. / Spots	Players
Minnesota	2 (44, 46)	Jesse Crain (P), Jason Kubel (OF)
White Sox	2 (23, 32)	Brandon McCarthy (P), Brian Anderson (OF)
Cleveland	2 (17, 31)	Michael Aubrey (1B), Adam Miller (P)
Detroit	1 (30)	Curtis Granderson (OF)
Kansas City	0	N/A

Note Kansas City - they were last in the division last year and don't really have anything coming up from the minors. Minnesota, thankfully, only has two on the list, and one of those (Kubel) is out for the season with a knee injury. Cleveland has a couple of good prospects, but they are already loaded at the 1B position with Hafner and Broussard.

It's nice to see our friend Brandon McCarthy so high on the list, but he still needs to do a lot of work in AA and perhaps AAA to warrant too much hype. He has gotten a fair amount of ink this spring - including comparisons to Jack McDowell - but with the Sox rotation set through 2006, the pressure should be off of him to think he'll have anything other than an injury-created spot in the rotation.