Reviewing the Minor Reviews

This past week, we wrapped up our 2009 Minor Reviews for each organization in Major League Baseball. The posts took a look at a few prospects for each organization that failed to make the Top 10 lists, for a variety of reasons.

The Top 10 lists will begin posting this coming week, beginning with the Kansas City Royals. We will spend two days looking at each organization; the first day will be a review of the last four amateur drafts for each club, while the second day will break down the Top 10 lists, complete with commentary on each player.

One difference with our Top 10 lists from most other publications is that they will not include 2009 draft picks. To be honest, it’s very difficult to effectively rank most same-year draft picks (not including the likes of Stephen Strasburg, of course) because of the small sample sizes offered in their debut seasons. As well, many top-ranked draft picks have been signing late each year with many of them not making their debuts until the following year. Key ’09 draft picks will be highlighted during the four-year amateur draft reviews that precede the Top 10 lists for each team.

If you missed your team’s Minor Review series, the links are posted below for your convenience, along with the five players reviewed for each club. In some instances you’ll notice some top prospects were reviewed (and will be showing up again on their teams’ Top 10 lists) because they were highlighted during the ’08 Minor Review series as their teams’ sleeper prospects for 2009.

The National League East