The Minor League Baseball season got underway last night as a few teams in the Double-A Eastern League took to the (chilly) field. As such, this presents a perfect opportunity to A) Look at the Top 10 prospects for each organization entering the season, and B) To see where all the top prospects are beginning the season.

The Colorado Rockies
1. Dexter Fowler, OF, Colorado (MAJ)
2. Jhoulys Chacin, RHP, Tulsa (AA)
3. Wilin Rosario, C, Modesto (A+)
4. Eric Young Jr., IF, Col. Springs (AAA)
5. Christian Friedrich, LHP, Asheville (A)
6. Hector Gomez, SS, Modesto (A+)
7. Mike McKenry, C, Tulsa (AA)
8. Delta Cleary, OF, Extended Spring Training
9. Connor Graham, RHP, Modesto (A+)
10. Charlie Blackmon, OF, Modesto (A+)

Other players of note: Casey Weathers (RHP), Esmil Rogers (RHP), Seth Smith (OF), Chris Nelson (SS), Shane Lindsay (RHP)

The San Francisco Giants
1. Madison Bumgarner, LHP, San Jose (A+)
2. Buster Posey, C, San Jose (A+)
3. Angel Villalona, 3B/1B, San Jose (A+)
4. Tim Alderson, RHP, San Jose (A+)
5. Nick Noonan, 2B, San Jose (A+)
6. Rafael Rodriguez, OF, Extended Spring Training
7. Conor Gillaspie, 3B, San Jose (A+)
8. Scott Barnes, LHP, San Jose (A+)
9. Henry Sosa, RHP, Connecticut (AA)
10. Ehire Adrianza, SS, Augusta (A)

Other Prospects of Note: Sergio Romo (RHP), Waldis Joaquin (RHP), Wendell Fairley (OF), Roger Kieschnick (OF), Travis Ishikawa (1B)

The Arizona Diamondbacks
1. Jarrod Parker, RHP, Visalia (A+)
2. Gerardo Parra, OF, Mobile (AA)
3. Daniel Schlereth, LHP, Mobile (AA)
4. Mark Hallberg, SS, Mobile (AA)
5. Trevor Harden, RHP, South Bend (A)
6. Wade Miley, LHP, South Bend (A)
7. Kevin Eichhorn, RHP, Extended Spring Training
8. Cesar Valdez, RHP, Reno (AAA)
9. Reynaldo Navarro, SS, South Bend (A)
10. Barry Enright, RHP, Mobile (AA)

Other Prospects of Note: Billy Buckner (RHP), Collin Cowgill (OF), Daniel Stange (RHP), Pedro Ciriaco (SS), Bryan Shaw (RHP), Josh Whitesell (1B)

The Los Angeles Dodgers
1. James McDonald, RHP, Los Angeles (MAJ)
2. Josh Lindblom, RHP, Chattanooga (AA)
3. Andrew Lambo, OF, Chattanooga (AA)
4. Ethan Martin, RHP, Great Lakes (A)
5. Scott Elbert, LHP, Chattanooga (AA)
6. Devaris Gordon, SS, Great Lakes (A)
7. Josh Bell, 3B, Chattanooga (AA)
8. Austin Gallagher, 3B, Great Lakes (A)
9. Chris Withrow, RHP, Inland Empire (A+)
10. Ivan DeJesus, SS, Disabled List

Other Prospects of Note: Nathan Eovaldi (RHP), Ramon Troncoso (RHP), Pedro Baez (3B), Kyle Russell (OF), Tony Delmonico (C)

The San Diego Padres
1. Kyle Blanks, 1B, Portland (AAA)
2. Adys Portillo, RHP, Extended Spring Training
3. Mat Latos, RHP, Lake Elsinore (A+)
4. Jaff Decker, OF, Extended Spring Training
5. Kellen Kulbacki, OF, San Antonio (AA)
6. Cedric Hunter, OF, San Antonio (AA)
7. Allan Dykstra, 1B, Fort Wayne (A)
8. Will Venable, OF, Portland (AAA)
9. James Darnell, 3B, Fort Wayne (A)
10. Simon Castro, RHP, Fort Wayne (A)

Other Prospects of Note: Logan Forsythe (3B), Matt Antonelli (2B), Wade LeBlanc (LHP), Will Inman (RHP), Cole Figueroa (2B), Mitch Canham (C)

Last night, Nick Adenhart had the best start of his career, shutting out the A’s for 6 innings. It will be the last time anyone saw him pitch. He was killed in a car accident shortly after midnight.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and the Angels organization.

The Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies this past Sunday, on national television, to start the entire major league season. For all intents and purposes, Derek Lowe dominated the Phillies en route to a 4-1 win. On Tuesday, sophomore Jair Jurrjens toed the rubber and held the defending champs scoreless throughout his 5.2 innings of work. Yesterday, Javier Vazquez made his Braves debut and pitched very well outside of a 2-run homer surrendered to Raul Ibanez. The bullpen that looked sharp in the first two games of the season fell off a cliff in the game, however, which helped turn a 10-3 deficit in the seventh inning into a 12-11 win for the Phils.

The poor decision belongs to Bobby Cox, for using his ace relievers in the first two games when they were not needed at all and then not being able to use them in a game that merited their services.

In the first game of the season, Lowe was cruising and the Phillies looked beaten at the plate. In fact, the Braves led 4-0 at the time of Lowe’s exit, and the Phillies only scored when Gonzalez came in and gave up an RBI single to Jayson Werth. Other than simply wanting to get his designated closer into a game, there was no reason to go with Gonzalez in the ninth inning. Not to say that Lowe needed to complete the game, which he seemed perfectly capable of doing, but a 4-0 lead is usually pretty safe in the last frame of a game, as shown by The Book.

In the Jurrjens game, the Phillies threatened on several occasions but ultimately failed to score a run. After Jurrjens left in the sixth, Jeff Bennett and Eric O’Flaherty held down fort in the sixth and seventh innings, sustaining the shutout. Then, with a 4-0 lead, Cox used Rafael Soriano in the eighth, and Mike Gonzalez once again in the ninth.

I can understand the usage of Soriano especially given the offday between these games and the fact that he had not pitched in a bit, but did Gonzalez really need to pitch again? A closer does not need to follow these age old usage patterns with leads greater than three runs and he probably should not even appear in a lead of exactly three runs. Are you telling me that Blaine Boyer or Peter Moylan could not have handled that ninth inning?

Yesterday, Cox wanted to get the remaining members of his bullpen yet to appear into the game, which ultimately led to an absolutely horrible loss. Boyer, Moylan, and O’Flaherty combined for 0.1 IP, 3 H, 8 ER, 4 BB, 0 K. Jorge Campillo completed the inning but did not get an out in the eighth, meaning this foursome combined for 1+ IP, 5 H, 9 ER, 6 BB, 0 K over the seventh and eighth innings. Bennett came in and relieved Campillo in the eighth, but you might have noticed that neither Soriano nor Gonzalez got into this game.

I can understand the need to get pitchers work over the course of a season and why that would merit relief aces appearing in 4-0 games, but hopefully this situation teaches the Braves a lesson. Relief aces are used for situations that really require top-of-the-line pitchers to get the job done. Moylan or O’Flaherty likely could have handled end of the game work in the first two meetings, and if they got into trouble then you turn to Raffy or Gonzo. Yesterday, when all of these pitchers did get in trouble, both Raffy and Gonzo were nowhere to be seen. Bobby Cox is a tremendous manager but he dropped the ball here by steadfastly sticking to the idea of a specialized bullpen.

The scouting reports on Trevor Cahill suggests that he throws a heavy fastball in the 89-92 range, a knuckle curve, and a change-up while inducing a boatload of groundballs. Well, at least some of that shined through as Cahill made his major league debut on Tuesday night versus the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Cahill opened the game with a 26 pitch first and had problems finding the zone, an issue that would plague him for most of the night. Cahill would go on to have two additional 20+ pitch innings, and finished with 102 in total. That was enough to get him through five innings, five walks, and a handful of swinging strikes. Cahill also failed to generate the type of groundballs shown in the minors. A 5.59 FIP is based on that poor strikeout/walk ratio, although it’s pointless to read anything into one start.

A few Pitchfx observations, sans graphs:

Cahill’s fastballs ride up and in to right-handed hitters, although a few were flatter and straighter than you would like.

Location was definitely the biggest issue with Cahill. Given his minor league track record I’m willing to accept most of this was nerves related, but goodness 55% strikes is not good. This does not seem to be an issue with a single pitch either.

All and all, Cahill appeared to make a conscious effort in pitching away from left-handed hitters, while attacking the entire zone versus righties.

Is Cahill ready to be in a major league rotation? It’s far too early to tell. There are some positives and negatives to take from his first start, but the sooner he finds some more command, the quicker he’ll become successful.

Despite my personal impression that Tim Lincecum and his agent were content to go year to year until free agency, a report surfaced recently that the pair and the Giants were open to talking about a long term contract. Lincecum’s agent opined that his client was poised to be a Super Two after this season, a reasonable assumption, and that Cole Hamels‘ recent contract could serve as a baseline for Lincecum.

Of course, Hamels’ contract didn’t buy out any of his free agent years so that makes it tough to evaluate in a context that we are used to. Furthermore, the whole nature of Super Twos throws off our 40/60/80 evaluation scheme for the percentage of market value typically awarded to players in arbitration.

Projection wise, a plurality of systems come to a pretty consistent estimate of Lincecum going forward. He was otherworldly last year for sure, but he is due for some regression in his home run rate and it would be silly to project him to toss 220+ innings each season. Essentially, the systems agree that a good median line for Lincecum is represented roughly by the half way mark between his 2007 (3.2 WAR) and 2008 (7.5 WAR) seasons, somewhere in the high 4s to mid 5s. That amount of value is worth around $20 to $25 million a year on the free market.

The main question then is to figure out what would represent a fair value for Lincecum’s arbitration years. If he were a normal player, he would have a year of club control left plus a total of 1.8 years of arbitration in free market terms. So that you can refer back if/when Lincecum does get a contract, I will present a range of fair values based on differing parameters. The weighting refer to the percentage of fair market value paid to in arbitration.

3-year contract under 20/40/60/80 weighting: $25 million
3-year contract under 30/50/70/90 weighting: $32 million
3-year contract under 40/60/80/100 weighting: $38 million

4-year contract under 20/40/60/80 weighting: $42 million
4-year contract under 30/50/70/90 weighting: $50 million
4-year contract under 40/60/80/100 weighting: $59 million

No matter what, Tim Lincecum deserves much better than Cole Hamels got out of Philadelphia.

My mornings have become quite routine over the last several months: wake up, deoderize, brush teeth, check e-mail, re-read the morning post I scheduled here the night before for errors, and head over to MLBTradeRumors to see if anything noteworthy has happened or is in the works. Well, I could have sworn my eyes were deceiving me the other day upon reading that Jeff Zimmerman had signed a minor league contract with the Seattle Mariners after a tryout this week. Alas, what I read proved true, and Zimmerman is on his way to the Mariners farm system.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most readers here do not remember Zimmerman as he has not thrown a major league pitch since the 2001 season. Heck, I probably would not remember him if not for playing in APBA leagues growing up and owning the Rangers. Now 36 years of age, Zimmerman has a chance to put his two Tommy John Surgeries in the past and get back to the major leagues.

From 1999-2001, Zimmerman was a pretty effective reliever, for the most part missing bats, keeping walks in check, and limiting damage from home runs. He logged 65, 65, and 66 games in his three seasons with a career 3.27 ERA and 3.96 FIP. In his final season back in 2001, Zimmerman struck out 9.1 batter per nine innings with a 4.50 K/BB ratio. Unfortunately, our win values do not extend back past 2002, so Zimmerman’s tally is unavailable, but his WPA/LI marks of 3.09, -0.28, and 2.56 show that he definitely showcased the ability to succeed at the major league level.

This signing differs from the low-risk acquisitions of players like Mark Prior, Shawn Hill, and Matt Clement, all three of whom have been active in the majors or minors over the past three seasons. Zimmerman has been out of the game for almost eight years now. Will Carroll summed this move up best in his Under the Knife piece today: “This isn’t the same as taking a shot on a post-surgical Chad Cordero; this is a Disney movie if it works.”

I couldn’t agree more, and here’s hoping that one of the reputed good guys can get his long forgotten career back on track.

We made it. After looking at the bottom 10 baseball organizations in terms of minor-league talent, and then the middle 10, we are now on to the best 10 systems in all of Major League Baseball. We’ve also been looking at how other publications have ranked the systems and all three of us feel pretty confident in the Top 6 teams. They appear in different orders one-through-six but they’re all there.

(BA = Baseball America, BP = Baseball Prospectus, FAN = FanGraphs)

The Top 10:
NO.  BA    BP    FAN
 1.  TEX   OAK   OAK
 2.  FLA   TEX   TEX
 3.  OAK    TB   FLA
 4.   TB   ATL   ATL
 5.   SF   FLA    TB
 6.  ATL    SF    SF
 7.  CLE   BAL   BAL
 8.  STL   BOS   CLE
 9.  BAL   STL   STL
10.  MIL   TOR    KC

The Top 6 teams, unanimously, are: Oakland, Texas, Florida, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and San Francisco. All six teams have seen their share of ups and downs, and have been aided by favorable slotting in the June amateur draft in recent years, which has helped their systems. Both Texas (6 picks) and San Francisco (6 picks) had multiple first and second round draft picks in the 2007 draft, which also helped the Toronto Blue Jays (7 picks), a club that was ranked 10th by Baseball Prospectus. San Diego (ranked 26th overall by FanGraphs) led clubs in 2007 with eight picks in the first two rounds, but selected seven players out of college and five of those players had modest starts to their pro careers. Top pick Nick Schmidt underwent Tommy John surgery not long after signing his contract (three games). Obviously, you have to make the most out of your opportunities.

An argument can seemingly be made for either Texas or Oakland sitting at No. 1 overall. Both clubs have made some good draft choices (Derek Holland by Texas, Trevor Cahill for Oakland) and each team has been helped by key trades. Texas’ system took a huge step forward after a trade with Atlanta that saw Mark Teixeira swapped for young catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia and prospects Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison and Beau Jones. Oakland made three solid trades that netted prospects such as Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, Adrian Cardenas, Aaron Cunningham, and Gio Gonzalez.

St. Louis is a surprising club in the Top 10 – I thought I’d made an error when I first tabulated my personal list – because it was a bottom-20 team for at least the last five years prior to 2008-09. It’s hard to improve upon Top 1st or 2nd but Texas could actually do it, depending on how many prospects graduate to the Majors in 2009… There are some talented players in rookie and A-ball that could quickly move up the rankings. Florida is no stranger to the NL Rookie of the Year award after winning it twice in the last six seasons (Hanley Ramirez, Dontrelle Willis) and Cameron Maybin could be next in line… and then Logan Morrison… and then Michael Stanton or Matt Dominguez… The club is also the most likely to regress because it relies so heavily on its young players on the Major League roster that it can deplete stock pretty quickly. The tight-fisted management also tends to trade off its ‘veteran’ players before they have the opportunity to become free agents and bring in compensatory draft picks.

The live Win Probability graphs are easily one of the coolest things we have here on FanGraphs. They convey the story of the game so well. And sometimes, that story doesn’t have a happy ending.

For fans of the Royals, Mariners, and Tigers, yesterday’s graphs represent pure pain.

Kyle Farnsworth, Brandon Morrow, and Brandon Lyon decided to pull the agony of defeat out of the jaws of victory, squandering leads and inflicting trauma upon three metropolitan areas. Not exactly the most auspicious way to begin your seasons, boys.

Tom Verducci has made a tremendous career for himself, writing for Sports Illustrated, appearing on the MLB Network, and penning Joe Torre’s book to name a few components of his resume. He garnered plenty of fame over the last several years for what has since been termed “The Verducci Effect,” a theory that pitchers under the age of 25 are significant injury risks the year after they exceed their previous year’s innings pitched total by 30 or more frames. If Pitcher A was 22 years old, threw 100 innings in 2006 and 175 innings in 2007, he would be considered to be a risky asset.

The theory makes intuitive sense and studies have been attempted to both confirm and deny its validity. Still, because of the logic involved, it has become our nature to suspect that pitchers meeting the aforementioned criteria are in fact injury risks.

Last February, Verducci predicted that Ian Kennedy, Yovani Gallardo, Chad Gaudin, Fausto Carmona, Tom Gorzelanny, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Dustin McGowan would fall prey to his self-named effect. As he pointed out in an SI article yesterday, all but Jimenez suffered injuries in one form or another last season. Verducci acknowledged in his article that not all of the injuries were arm-related, but the idea that he was a successful prognosticator and that said predictions were correct is a bit questionable, especially given the acknowledgement that not all of the injuries were arm-related, and because I see no proof of how the injuries not related to the arm were caused by the taxation of pitching.

How would pitching 30+ innings cause Yovani Gallardo to tear his ACL? Or how it hurt Fausto Carmona’s hip while covering first base on a routine play? Or, perhaps how it caused Chad Gaudin to slip off of a curb and smack his back on a dumpster… and yes, you read that correctly. I am in no way criticizing the theory itself but rather the idea that these guys were correctly predicted simply because they happened to get injured at one point or another throughout the season.

We need to get more specific and look for pitchers to have arm issues, like McGowan and Gorzelanny did. The pitchers with injuries not related to the arm should not be touted, unless they are somehow proven to have been related to the act of pitching. This doesn’t rule out all all injuries not related to the arm but it does merit much further investigation on such injuries. Kudos to him for identifying the likes of Kennedy, Gorzelanny, and McGowan, but Gallardo, Gaudin and Carmona fell victim to other forms of injury, not the conditioning problems suggested by the 30+ innings idea. They may have fallen prey with more innings if not injured previously, but that is not the point here. These guys do not need to be touted if they are not proven victims of the theory.

Matt Clement signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in the offseason hoping to get his injury-plagued major league career back on track. The deal was not guaranteed and his chances of cracking the rotation were slim at best, but the 34-yr old righty had been successful in the past and seemed like a solid low-risk signing with the potential for high reward. Though the right shoulder which had been bothersome since 2006 felt better this spring, Clement did not show JP Ricciardi and the Blue Jay brass enough to merit a spot on the pitching staff. After pondering over whether or not to accept an assignment to AAA, Clement instead decided to hang up his cleats after nine seasons.

After three seasons with the Padres and a lone year with the Marlins, Clement found himself shipped to the Cubs for prospect Dontrelle Willis. Our win values for pitchers begin in that 2002 season which happens to be when Clement came into his own. Over the next four seasons, three of which were spent on the Cubs with the other coming as a member of the Red Sox, Clement ranged from 181-205 innings pitched, posted FIPs between 3.34 and 4.14, and averaged +3.6 wins/yr.

In 2006, he was limited to just 12 starts due to the issues with his right shoulder, and he has not pitched in the major leagues since then. Clement spent the entire 2007 season recovering before signing a minor league deal with the Cardinals last year. Things did not necessarily go as planned as he could not pitch effectively enough to merit a callup. After fighting hard to get back to the point where he could pitch comfortably, Ricciardi remarked that Clement just seemed tired of fighting, thus providing insight into the decision to retire.

Clement, virtually the posterchild for the phrase “wildly effective,” missed plenty of bats, kept the majority of his balls in play on the ground, but definitely struggled with control, finishing his career with a 7.8 K/9, 4.1 BB/9, and 4.24 FIP. Pitching is a very unnatural bodily action and injuries are bound to surface all the time, which makes the Maddux’s of the world look like freaks not just based on performance but rather durability. Matt Clement had a very solid four-year span from 2002-05 and while I’m sure many of us were rooting for him to get another chance, it just was not in the cards. If he changes his mind, though, Marcel sees Clement capable of a 4.61 FIP in 60 innings.