Prospect Porn!, plus stuff.

John Sickels of minorleagueball.com just did a review of the Jays farm system the other day, and holy shit!  I knew that this was a good farm, but Sickels is actually kind of getting my hopes up.  Way up.  Like, "Friendly Giant" waaaaayy up.

The standard for Sickels' prospect list is to put in the system's Top 20, and then throw in a few honorable mentions.  For the Jays, he does a top-25, and then throws in another list of 15-20 honorable mentions, and exclaims multiple times that "this system is deep."  He also followed that post up with another today, so basically what I'm trying to say here is that he really likes this farm.

The list is here.  A few notes that catch my eye:

• There are no "A" prospects in the system (more on that in a minute), but that isn't really a big deal.  Sickels is a tough marker, and there aren't very many "A"'s anyway.  B+'s and B's are very good, and many become stars, especially the B's that are in the lower minors.
• Travis d'Arnaud as #1 doesn't really surprise me.  I'm more interested in his #2 ranking of Nestor Molina.  Up until now, based on everything I've read, only Kevin Gray is really high on Molina.  Keith Law sees Molina's ceiling as a #3-4 starter, and I think a lot of others do too, but the more people who wish to rank Molina really high on a deep system, the better it makes me feel.
• Anthony Gose comes in at #9, which seems a lot lower than most other lists.  He needs to improve his hitting, but "Grade A tools, Grade C+ skills, makes him a strong Grade B overall" sums it up.  Oddly enough, Jake Marisnick ranks #3 despite Gose being the much more commonly known name, most likely due to being much younger, but profiling similarly.
• Catchers AJ Jimenez and Carlos Perez rank at 10 and 21 respectively.  For the longest time, we've heard about how especially strong the Jays were at catcher, and that Perez and d'Arnaud project pretty similarly.  I'm not saying that this list crushes that claim, but Perez had a rough year this year, and d'Arnaud was excellent.
• Pitchers Noah Syndergaard, Justin Nicolino, Daniel Norris, Deck McGuire, and Drew Hutchison make up spots 4-8, with emphasis on the former three.
• Hechavarria probably isn't ever going to be what we originally thought he would.

Good enough for you?  Well there's more.  Today, he posted this link, answering some questions from the original link.  The highlights:

If he still qualified as a prospect, Brett Lawrie would be a pure Grade A, top of the Blue Jay list, and a Top Five prospect in baseball. He might even rank Number Two behind Bryce Harper, although I won't be able to answer that until I get all of my grades complete and the Top 50 list done.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I didn't already know that Brett Lawrie was something special, but

• We get a wordy explanation of how the rankings differentiate between the pitchers in the top 10, listed above.  We also find out that Henderson Alvarez would be among those guys if he were eligible.

Stuff

Jon Paul Morosi thinks the Jays should sign Prince Fielder.  I dunno, not crazy about it, but I'd rather him than Heath Bell.  It seems like Morosi is just going from team to team talking about who is interested and who should sign Fielder.

The Orioles traded for Taylor Teagarden today.  Nothing major.

The Cubs signed David DeJesus yesterday to a 2 year deal worth $10MM.  I think this is a fantastic sign, no matter what the plan is, in terms of whether they tear down the team and rebuild, or try to just spend and contend.  In a world where Aaron Hill gets 2y/11MM, we can be assured that Theo Epstein is a genius.

Apparently, if the Twins can't re-sign Michael Cuddyer, Josh Willingham has been discussed.  Which is weird, because Willingham is better than Cuddyer.  I'd consider going after the better player first, but that's just me.

Finally, thanks to Tango, the MLB announced that teams qualifying for the competitive balance draft, that is, teams who play in the smallest market or had the smallest revenues in 2011.

The teams that will be eligible for the first lottery are the D-backs, Orioles, Indians, Royals, A's, Pirates, Padres, Rays, Reds, Rockies, Marlins, Brewers and Cardinals.

 Ummm, what?  The Cardinals? The reigning World Series champions?  Competitive balance?  The D-Backs, Brewers and Rays all made the playoffs too, so maybe there's a slight problem with this.  I'm not saying that only non-playoff teams should be eligible for this, per se, but the fact that four of the 13 teams eligible for this competitive balance draft have made the playoffs this year (plus, the Reds made it last year, the Padres almost got there last year, the Rockies made it to the World Series a few years ago...), maybe a non-playoff clause would make sense?

Meanwhile, the Jays haven't been to the playoffs in 20 years, the Nats have been away from playoff baseball for even longer, and the Astros and Cubs have been a fucking joke since Bartman day.  Maybe market and revenue isn't the real problem.  There are some shitty GM's out there who have taken "big market" or "high revenue" teams, and have run them straight in to the ground, and some awesome GM's who have succeeded with no budget and no fans filling their stadiums.  I'm not particularly sure an extra sandwich pick is going to change a whole lot, especially with the new draft bonus regulations, but the execution here, much like the execution of everything else in the new CBA, is pretty flawed.