Another Update: 1/17

Just a quick update on some things happening in the Tribe prospect world.

• Baseball America yesterday released their Indians Top 10 list, and Chris Kline also did a chat talking about the list and some other prospects. If I was ever going to recommend someone other than myself for Indians prospect info, Chris is the guy. He knows the Tribe system up and down, and actually sees a lot of these kids play and keeps tabs on them throughout the season. Most other sites - in fact no one else really – don’t do that. Not John Sickels, not MiLB.com, not any other prospect site on the Internet. So, pay attention to what Chris says, as he talks from firsthand knowledge and gets fed a ton of info from scouts being that he writes for Baseball America.
  
  As I have said in the past, these rankings are arbitrary and really just a guideline of the best players to watch out for in the system, and most importantly provide scouting info on each player so people know who they are. I have no issues with BA’s list other than Mills and Huff getting such lofty rankings, but this is BA’s usual course of action as top draft picks usually get highly rated in their first season or two. Plus, really, anyone after the Top 6 is interchangeable to be from 7 to 20 or 30 on my list.
  
  

• An unfortunate development in the farm system I just became privy to is right-handed reliever Michael Finocchi has a broken leg. I cannot answer as to how long he is expected to be out, when the injury actually occurred or how it happened, or the severity of the injury. Still, this is an unfortunate setback for Michael, as he is a highly regarded relief prospect in the system and was just coming onto the Indians major league radar. Worst case scenario, his broken leg is severe like the one that sidelined Matt Whitney for all of the 2003 season, or best case he comes back in May/June. I wish Michael a speedy recovery, and hopefully it is not too serious.
  
  

• On the positive side, I also got word that right-handed reliever Randy Newsom just started a company where people can invest in professional athletes. The site is www.realsportsinvestments.com. An interesting idea, and something that will be interesting to follow to see if he hits a home run on this or strikes out. It looks to have potential, but a lot of legal and financial experts would probably disagree. Anyhow, check it out, and supposedly Baseball Prospectus will be running a piece on it soon.

• Now that my Indians Top 50+ Prospect List is done, I can get to updating some of the outdated reference material here on the site. I slacked on keeping up with the various reference material as all time and energy was spent the past two months finishing the writeups on the prospects. I'll be adding separate links to each prospect scouting report so they can be easily referenced from the left panel by name, and I will also be updating all the other reference material over the course of the next few weeks.
  
  I’ll also be doing a wrapup piece at some point on the Top 50+ List providing some opinions and answering some questions from e-mailers. And, by popular request, I will at some point here in the next few weeks provide the scouting reports for Matt Whitney and Brian Barton. These two were lost in the Rule 5 Draft before I finished the reports, and I pulled them from the listing, but seeing as how they both could return I felt it best to add them. Plus, it may provide a little more insight into what we lost (and may get back).

• A quick story. While I was in Vegas last week, I had the fortunate pleasure of bumping into former minor league Quinn Mack. Quinn is the younger brother of popular Minnesota Twins outfielder Shane Mack of the early 90s, and Quinn played 10 years in the minors and only got to experience five games at the major league level in 1994 with Seattle.
  
  I bumped into Quinn because he is one of those sales representatives for a timeshare in Vegas, and my wife and I did one of those deals to check it out for two hours to get some free show tickets and gambling money. The two hours ended up not being a high pressure sales pitch, but instead him reminiscing about life in the minors once we both found out about each other (him being a former player, me being a minor league writer). Quinn is a good guy, and had some great stories to tell, and his son is currently a sophomore in high school already being scouted. Good luck to him and his family.

• Last but not least, I am starting to finalize my spring training plans. Looks like I will be driving down to Florida with the family on Thursday March 13th and will visit some family for a day or two, and then be on site at Winter Haven from Sunday March 16th until Monday March 24th before I head back home. If you will be in Winter Haven during that time, look me up.

Posted in: Baseball America,Michael Finocchi,Randy Newsom