11/25/2009

Say Goodbye to 2009

Prospect Cleanup Underway

We're overhauling our prospects database for 2010, so it's time to say goodbye to the rookies of 2009 and make room for next year's crop.   

Chris Coghlan surprised prognosticators everywhere by sneaking off with the 2009 ROY award.

Chris Coghlan, Florida's kid supreme, won the NL Rookie of the Year award despite never even scraping our preseason top fifty prospects list. Coghlan, who entered the year as a second base prospect, peaked at #57 in April, but that didn't seem to hurt his confidence much.

Moved to left field by the Marlins, he found a home quickly, and rose to national attention with a late-season hitting streak in July and August that gave him 113 second-half hits, most in all of baseball. While his overall season wasn't one of the hottest rookie campaigns, it was enough to stand out in a weak field. Coghlan, now a full-time outfielder, has settled into a core contributing role for the Marlins, a cash-poor, talent-rich team that keeps on producing from within the system. He should be the team's regular left-fielder for 2010.

Coghlan is a prospect no more, of course, and so he moves into the Scouting Book graduate roll along with AL Rookie of the Year Andrew Bailey (another surprise) and many other players we all expected to have bigger debuts, including catcher Matt Weiters and pitcher David Price, two players who still have bright careers ahead of them, even if the shiny luster of hype has worn off.

Wait 'Til Next Year

The 2010 prospect class, led by superpitcher Stephen Strasburg, is a rich one. Here at Scouting Book, we've said goodbye to our 2009 class and are working away on more than a thousand new player profiles for 2010. The most interesting two or three hundred of these new faces will be appearing in our rankings in bunches as the new season approaches.

Important Note on Updates: If you're shocked! shocked! shocked! that your favorite prospect isn't included on our list yet, hang in there. We only make new additions to the list public after everyone here at Scouting Book has weighed in on them (that's where the initial rankings come from), so if you can't find your beloved baby batters or most precious precocious pitchers yet, be patient: they'll be here soon enough.

This crazy addition time also means that the rankings are very, very dynamic during the next two months, so don't read too much into someone who seems much too high or too low... it'll all make tasty sense once the missing ingredients hit the cake.

We expect we'll be adding players every week or so until late January, after which things should start to settle down and the rankings will begin to stabilize, so stay tuned and pay attention!

 

 

 

   

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