Quickly

That's Travis d'Arnaud, the Jays' top prospect, per Keith Law's list of 100 top prospects in baseball.  d'Arnaud ranks #6 on such a list, placing him ahead of some pretty big names, such as catchers Jesus Montero and Devin Mesoraco, and other more famous prospects such as Gerrit Cole, Dylan Bundy, Anthony Rendon, Bubba Starling, Arodys Viscaino, and I could go on for a while.

Other Jays on that list include Drew Hutchison at #42, Jake Marisnick at #47, Anthony Gose at #59, and Aaron Sanchez at #96.  Tampa and Atlanta seem to have a fucking thousand people on this list, by the way.

Law also happens to believe that the Jays have the third best farm system in baseball, which is a slight deviation from his peers, who give the Jays' system a pretty consensus'ed #1.  Says Law:

One of the many reasons criticism of Rogers Communications, the owner of the Blue Jays, for being stingy with free agents is so ignorant is that the club has spent aggressively in the amateur markets during the past three years, grabbing high-ceiling high school players and Latin American prospects by stockpiling picks and paying whatever it took to sign those players. They are the organization most likely to be No. 1 on this list next winter.

So basically, what every Jays' blogger has been saying all offseason when questions about signing Prince Fielder or Albert Pujols or Yu Darvish came up.

For what it's worth, Law gives the nod to the Padres system as the best farm system, despite having no prospects in the top-25.  The Rays are second-best, to Law, but if you look at his write-ups of the top 3, he basically uses the word "high-ceiling" a bunch of times, and talks about the depth of systems without saying the word "depth".  Kansas City takes a dive from #1 to #5, mainly due to graduations of Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Danny Duffy, and Johnny Giavotella, but they still have enough depth and high-ceiling guys to rank in the top 5.

There's a paywall, but here's your link to Law's top 100 and farm system rankings.  He should have his top-10 for each team up at some point today or tomorrow. [Update-- Here it is.  Behind the paywall again, obviously.  Here's the Jays' top 10 though:


1. Travis d'Arnaud, C (6)
2. Drew Hutchison, RHP (42)
3. Jake Marisnick, CF (47)
4. Anthony Gose, CF (59)
5. Aaron Sanchez, RHP (96)
6. Justin Nicolino, RHP
7. Noah Syndergaard, RHP
8. A.J. Jimenez, C
9. Adonis Cardona, RHP
10. Deck McGuire, RHP


Pitchers and premium positions... boratverynice.jpg]

Stuff
MGL was on the MLB network's Clubhouse Confidential yesterday.  Here's the Tango thread for that, complete with a video.  Personally, I'd just rather we stayed here in our little corner of the internet until someone (Andrew Friedman, probably) goes and wins like 9 World Series using all the SABR stuff, and then we, as a collective of baseball nerds, can come out and say "We told you so!", because they're just going to make fun of us otherwise.  Too fragile, man.

ZiPS projections for the Texas Rangers came up yesterday or the day before.  And holy fuck, this team is good.  For the record, they give Yu Darvish comps of Ben Sheets, Javier Vazquez, and Roy Oswalt.

Finally, Yahoo!Sports is supposed to open their 2012 Fantasy Baseball season today, but as of yet, haven't done so.  I typically go with about 8 fantasy baseball teams each year, across a few different sites, but last year I missed about a week during a vacation and came back to see exactly 0 of my teams doing anywhere near as well as they were before I left.  Still, mock-drafting!