TOWER GROVE — Returned home after a delayed, fogged, re-routed and serpentine trek back from Prague to be greeted by a true sign of spring: Lindy’s Fantasy Baseball was on the airport’s magazine racks.

Ah, preview mags. 

Flipped through Lindy’s on the last leg of the flight home and loved scanning the mock draft and the predicted statistics. One of the first places I turned was to the list of ”Hot Properties”, or 40 fantasy rookies to watch in 2008. There, ranked right behind the well-known name of the Colorado Rockies’ Ian Stewart and ahead of San Diego’s second baseman-in-waiting Matt Antonelli was this line:

No. 20 Colby Rasmus, OF, Cardinals  

He’s arrived.

Then again, ’tis the season of rankings.

Awaiting on my doorstep was Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook. The annual tomb is February’s must-read, and a year-round resource for all things future. As many of you know, I write the Cardinals’ chapter for the book. (This was my second year I’ve had that opportunity.) I report, research and sketch out the rankings and then work with editors and various sources to shape the final rankings.  

I had hoped to time a look at the various Community Top 30s — including the one we did over at Cards Talk — with the release of the BA Top 30. Geography made that difficult. And it’s looks like missed the mad dash to discuss, too. But, better late than never. Below is how the Cards Talk Comm Top 30 compared with the BA Top 30, and then a look at how other sites ran their community prospects rankings and the results.

Cards Talk Community Top 30 

 Here is the Top 30 put together by a vote of posters in P-D’s Cardinals message board during a monthlong project earlier this offseason. The number that follows the ranking is the difference between the CT Top 30 and the BA Top 30, with “–” representing no difference.

1. Colby Rasmus, OF (–)
2. Bryan Anderson, C (+1)
3. Jaime Garcia, LHP (+2)
4. Chris Perez, RHP (-2)
5. Adam Ottavino, RHP (+1)
6. Tyler Herron, RHP (+4)
7. Brian Barton, OF (-3)
8. Jarrett Hoffpauir, 2B (+13)
9. Allen Craig, 3B (+6)
10. Clayton Mortensen, RHP (-2)
11. Jose Martinez, SS/2B (+6)
12. Mitchell Boggs, RHP (-3)
13. Peter Kozma, SS (-3)
14. P.J. Walters, RHP (+2)
15. David Freese, 3B (NR, San Diego’s No. 28)
16. Joe Mather, OF (-3)
17. Jon Jay, OF (-6)
18. Jason Motte, RHP (+6)
19. Kenny Maiques, RHP (-5)
20. Jess Todd, RHP (-8)
21. Blake Hawksworth, RHP (-1)
22. Mark McMormick, RHP (+3)
23. Ryde Rodriguez, OF (NR)
24. Kyle McClellan, RHP (-5)
25. Luis de la Cruz, C (+5)
26. Cody Haerther, OF (NR)
27. D’Marcus Ingram, OF (NR)
28. Jon Edwards, OF (NR)
29. Tyler Greene, SS (–)
30. Mark Hamilton, 1B (-3)

There are not too many surprising differences there. Maybe Hoffpauir. But there are some shocking absences, as I mentioned during the actual vote. The prospects ranked in BA’s Top 30 that aren’t in the CT Top 30 are:

18. Brad Furnish, LHP

22. Mark Worrell, RHP

23. Mike Parisi, RHP

26. Blake King, RHP

28. Luke Gregerson, RHP

With the exception of Parisi, each of those pitchers projects as a reliever (Furnish is being developed as a starter, with the potential traits of a starter, but could mature into a reliever). Worrell, it should be noted, is the top RHP prospect in the system according to a selection of the metrics the club uses to assess potential and value. (That was discussed in an earlier blog entry from Winter Warm-up).

Relievers didn’t connect with the Cards Talk crowd, for the most part.

I failed to get McClellan into the top 15 and then into the top 20 despite obvious attempts to stump for the righthander. Had the same trouble when discussing the reliever with some of the powers that be at BA. Their argument probably resonates with the Cards Talk crowd: McClellan is a reliever, is a reliever, is a reliever. To rank as a high pitching prospect, consult the spectrum:

Front-line starter — Closer — Nos. 3-4 Starter — Shutdown Reliever

That explains why given the same/similar attributes and statistical comps, a pitcher like Motte or Maiques would track higher in the rankings than McClellan. Todd also fell victim to this trend, barely making the Top 20 in Cards Talk when there’s some talk he belongs in the Top 10 of the organization.

That’s fine. That’s good. I tend — sometimes to a fault — to rate players based on their ability to move and proximity to the majors. That’s a key part of the metric the Cardinals (and other teams) use, and it explains the high compliment to Worrell. Perez ranks so high on the BA list for a combined number of reasons:

• He’s going to eventually be a closer.

• He’s got nasty stuff, and no reason to believe he won’t control it.

• He’s a few months from a major-league debut.

That’s a prospect trifecta that is only trumped by Rasmus’. Hence, Nos. 1 and 2.

That approach leads my rankings to resemble a depth chart as much as a Top 30.

A benefit of that, I believe, is its resistence to be swayed by recent performance.

Parisi, most of all, suffered from prospect fatigue in the Cards Talk rankings. He’s been around awhile. He’s moved steadily. His stats aren’t a beacon for attention. But he’s on the verge of the majors. It doesn’t make sense to me for a guy who has been ranked regularly (even annually) to drop out of the 30 when he’s as close to the majors as he’s ever been — without a lock-cinch reason.

The Cards Talk crew favored recent performance and hope, with the Haerther anomaly, of course. There isn’t much to the candicacy of outfielders D’Marcus Ingram or Ryde Rodriguez except a small sampling of statistics, a handful of cool stories and anecdotes, and tools to “dream on”. Like the presidential electorate, Cards Talk clearly wanted change — new names, dreamier skills and not a lot of performance to drag down those high hopes into the murkier waters of data.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s how Daryl Jones scaled the rankings so quickly.

And fell just as rapidly.

Steady climbers and metronome hitters don’t have the sizzle, but they build an organization and they contribute to the majors by filling in around the sliver of Could-Be Stars who turn into Are Stars.

Scout.Com & Future Redbirds Community Top 30ish

Tireless online authors Brian Walton, of Scout.com’s Birdhouse, and Erik Manning, of the essential-reading Future Redbirds, were kind enough to send me the community rankings done by their readers. Manning’s is a Top 25; Walton’s went on to be a Top 50. I sliced off the 25 and 30 to keep it true to the Cards Talk exercise. Here are the two rankings, with Future Redbirds’ listed first, Scout.com’s second:

1. Rasmus, OF … Rasmus, OF

2. Garcia, LHP … Anderson, C

3. Anderson, C … Garcia, LHP

4. Perez, RHP … Ottavino, RHP

5. Ottavino, RHP … Perez, RHP

6. Herron, RHP … Herron, RHP

7. Mortensen, RHP … Mather, OF

8. Barton, OF … Craig, 3B

9. Boggs, RHP … Hoffpauir, 2B

10. Craig, 3B … Barton, OF

11. Kozma, SS … Walters, RHP

12. Martinez, 2B/SS … Kozma, SS

13. Walters, RHP … Martinez, 2B/SS

14. Hoffpauir, 2B … Hamilton, 1B

15. Freese, 3B … Mortensen, RHP

16. Maiques, RHP … Maiques, RHP

17. Mather, OF … Boggs, RHP

18. Motte, RHP … Todd, RHP

19. Jay, OF … Freese, 3B

20. Hamilton, 1B … McCormick, RHP

21. Todd, RHP … Hawksworth, RHP

22. Deryk Hooker, RHP … Haerther, OF

23. Edwards, OF … de la Cruz, C

24. McClellan, RHP … Josh Kinney*, RHP

25. Steven Hill, 1B/C … Edwards, OF

26. … Motte, RHP

27. … Jay, OF

28. … Gregerson, RHP

29. … Greene, SS

30. … Tyler Norrick, LHP

(* Kinney was not eligible for the Cards Talk Comm Top 30. He was by-the-rules eligible for the BA Handbook, but after a long discussion with the editors there we decided to include him in the depth chart, but get a new name in the rankings.) 

As Walton and others have pointed out the organization’s top six are pretty standardized. Further proof of the opinion my colleagues and I have been stressing about the nature of the Cardinals’ improvement: Much more depth, still thin on elite prospects. The Community Top 30s show the fans share the same view. The top six of the three rankings are the same six players (with the BA Top 30, it’s the same top five). Look at the aggregate top sixes from the fan polls:

1. Rasmus … 3 (three first-place votes)
2. Anderson … 7
3. Garcia … 8
4. Perez … 13
5. Ottavino … 14
6. Herron … 18 (three six-place votes)

After that it’s pell-mell.

Walton hits on a lot of those themes in an email he sent me about Scout.com’s Community Top 50:

Short memories continue to be a theme, with a player who was out of sight
last season like Jay stashed way down at 27, behind Haerther and Edwards and far beneath Barton. Tyler Greene is another player that seemed to receive far less respect than I think he deserves apparently based on his injuries in 2007. Given his level in the organization, I was a bit surprised to see the aggressive placement of de la Cruz, but his GCL #9 ranking by BA obviously generated a lot of attention. With the best arms in a system typically starting rather than relieving, I also wonder about three relievers in the #24-28 spots.

The comment leads me to the great head scratchers in these fan polls: Mortensen and Jay. Jay is the reverse-Ingram. He already was a polarizing prospects for pundits and fans. Some are worried about his batting stance and his timing twitters. Others believe he’ll win a batting title — which, the rebuttal goes, is swell if he’s a center fielder, but that bat needs pop if he’s going to be the corners. What if Rasmus is providing that corner pop from center, then doesn’t Jay fit a No. 2? 

The debate continues from there.

The reason Jay plummeted in the fan rankings is far more mundane: Out of sight, out of mind. Three trips to the disabled list in 2007. Shoulder injury. Wrist problems. Injuries galore. Jay is still a Top-10 prospect for me because of the body of work before the body broke down. He’s Top 11 in the BA handbook because Barton nudged him from the top 10. But it’s hard to see Jay too far detached from his fellow Hurricane.

And then there’s Mortensen.

Been writing about him and his rapid rise for awhile in the blog. There are some in the organization who believe he’ll be in Triple-A this season, and the invite to big-league spring training supports the organization’s high estimations of the righthander. Personally, I’d have him ranked ahead of Kozma today. My opinion is only part of the BA process, and others trumped that opinion.

Again, it shows my preference for proximity to the majors, while BA also wants to show ceiling. Kozma’s ceiling gets the vote in this case.

Perhaps it will be Future Redbirds’ readers who get it right, when we look back years from now. The FR Comm Top 25 has Mortensen seventh, and that’s just one area where this ranking has one of the best looks of the Comm Top 30s. Martinez is properly lauded; Mather receives a nod for his breakout season but a subdued ranking for his total career. Boggs gets top-10 attention here that he deserves.

It’s the ranking of prep fireballer Hooker that prompted this thought from Manning:

I wonder if players who have dominating performances in the lower levels the the GCL, pitcher particularly, should just be tagged as “sleepers” and not bonafide prospects, unless they are like a first rounder or something.

That’s sort of the route I took when attaching the sleeper tag to three players when submitting a file to BA. Those three will be familiar: Ingram, Rodriguez and Hill. All are players worth watching … but have not yet bloomed as prospects.

Wrote Manning:

I think it was a good list and a worthwhile exercise. I’ve learned a lot from it, and even with my own personal list I’d probably do some reshuffling. I think fans would maybe do a little better by pretending to be another team’s GM and ask themselves “what players would I want.” I think you would get a little more love for players who are closer to the majors (read: McClellan, Hawksworth, Parisi, Haerther, etc.) and a little less excitement over college players picked later in draft who had great debuts in the lower minors.

Couldn’t agree more. When closer doesn’t mean better, it should be the tiebreaker. And it’s always better to come at a list like this with an eye for what is most coveted by others. Starters are. Five tools are. Production is. If you rank the players for any organization by how much interest there is in them from other organizations, you’ll have a strong Top 30.

The Community Top 30 was an excellent exercise. I hope that it revealed a lot to readers about the nature of the Cardinals’ farm system. I know it revealed a lot about how the readers find value in the Cardinals’ farm system.

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