After that probably Brown, Weeks and Hunter.

I think it is too early for Leyja and Coleman. Leyja especially I would probably only rank 8th out of players from the 2008 draft.

Has DLS’ potential, but is healthy, and has stats against advanced competition. Plus very young. Only question is whether Leon can transfer to starting well. I think he will.

Actually, it’s not that long. Here’s what he’s done in pro ball so far:

Age 18:
For Saltillo: 41.2 IP, 38 K, 24 BB, 2 HR
For Culiacan: 28.1 IP, 27 K, 9 BB, 1 HR
Age 19:
For Stockton:28.1 IP, 28 K, 9 BB, 1 HR
For Saltillo: 14.2 IP, 21 K, 2 BB, 0 HR
For Culiacan (running total): 14 IP, 10 K, 6 BB, 1 HR

Total: 127 IP, 124 K, 50 BB, 5 HR

Basically, he’s managed to hold his own (almost 1 K an inning, better than 2:1 K:BB ratio) in a series of leagues which he was almost ridiculously young for. The Mexican Summer and Winter leagues are largely populated by guys in their late 20s— major leaguers, ex-major leaguers and AAA washouts. In fact, if I understand the story correctly, the A’s actually signed Leon because they saw him while they were scouting Dana Eveland and some other major leaguers in the Mexican winter league and had one of those “who is that kid?” moments.

“But Paul,” many of you are now saying, “you’ve said many times that ARL doesn’t matter that much for pitchers!” True, it doesn’t. And Leon isn’t insanely projectable the way Inoa is; he might bump his fastball from 92 to 93-94, but he’s not taking it to 99 the way Inoa might. Which is why he’s behind Inoa on my list. Nonetheless, the list of guys who could get AA and AAA hitters out at age 18 is pretty short, and most of them are pretty special pitchers.

He’s only worked as a reliever so far, which might be a blessing or a curse depending on your point of view. The bad part is, it might take him a while to build up the stamina to go deep into ballgames, and fatigue might put him at some extra risk of injury for a period (especially since he’s smack in the middle of the dreaded “injury nexus” right now). The good part is, his arm doesn’t have a high inning load on it, which bodes well for his future ability.

Here’s why I believe in him: Leon’s consistently gotten top marks from the A’s pitching people for his command, poise, and makeup, and he’s got a good enough arm that last year’s spring training stories had 3 or 4 which basically involved someone or other seeing him for the first time and saying “he’s how young? Fuckin’ A.”

His development curve has been a little odd because of the manner in which he came to the A’s, but I’m convinced the only thing standing between him and the majors is building up his arm enough to start 30 games a season. He’s already shown the ability to dominate hitters much older than him with strikeouts and groundouts (not shown here, but his GO/AO ratio has been around 1.5 for his career). I think he’s got the potential to develop into a Mexican Dan Haren. (OK, Dan Haren is himself half-Mexican, but that’s not Mexican enough for me…)

He’s a pretty special talent. Inevitable caveats: Todd van Poppel was pretty special too, etc etc. Yeah, he could flame out, but I think he’s much less likely to do so than Rodriguez or post-TJS DLS. I’m backing his horse to the finish line.

I don’t think the A’s took him because they were that desperate for infielders, but because they think he’s going to be a good player.

10.84

Two numbers that say HRod is roughly 1.365 times the prospect Simmons will ever be.

(Actually I agree with you PT, Simmons is better. Though I still rather would have had Porcello.)

…how it’s very hard to rank players based on upside and likelihood of success. So how would your top ten lists look for each?

Upside
Inoa
Dixon
FDLS
Carter
Cahill
HRod (as starter)
Leon
Anderson
Cardenas
Hunter

Likelihood of being average MLB regular or better
Cunningham
Simmons
Petit
Anderson
Cahill
Outman
Gio
Pennington
Lansford
Mazzaro

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