The Guardians’ Prospect Pipeline Has Shifted
· Yahoo Sports
As The Roster Turns
– byMario Crescibene
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The Guardians have made a number of roster moves over the last two weeks. I briefly considered writing this as a summary like a soap opera recap:
“Last time on As The Roster Turns…”
Make it a breathless “previously on…” of who got called up, who got sent down, and all the drama over who gets a starting job. But I doubt that a soap opera framing would work for the readers here on Covering the Corner, so I’ll spare you the dramatic organ music and get right into the meat.
Here are the key transactions that took place over the last two weeks showing players’ current level within the organization, and whether they got promoted or demoted:
Back in April, I explored the self-filtering, self-sustaining prospect pipeline the Guardians have created. A prospect-selecting machine where nobody is blocked, and nobody is handed anything. Where every promotion at one level opens a job at the level below it, and the whole system selects the best prospects through internal competition.
The last two weeks have brought that theory to life. You don’t need me to walk you through each individual move — the grid below tells the story. What matters is taking stock of the state of the machine, and seeing where the Guardians pipeline currently stands.
So let’s look at how the gears have turned since April.
As with the previous article, we will look at the outfield and infield as position groups, while separating catchers and first basemen. Names in red highlight MLB Pipeline Top 100 Prospects, and bold names are organizational top 30 prospects. The numbers in parentheses show their organizational ranking first, and their MLB Top 100 Ranking second, where applicable.
The names that appear at the bottom of each level are intriguing prospects with potential, but are not yet considered to be in competition with the top three prospects in each position group. What matters is the chain of succession, and the internal battles taking place within each group.
The biggest change that occurred from my first analysis is that Akron is now loaded, and Lake County is the level that needs to be upgraded. But you can already imagine a future Lake County Captains infield of Francisca (13), Rodriguez (19), and Fernandez (21)… and an outfield of LaViolette (11), Caceres (6/96), and Arias (20).
Overall, we can see that the upper levels are being fed well by the lower levels, and with recent demotions like Benjamin and Advincula… if you don’t prove you’ve got what it takes… there is someone waiting in line behind you ready to prove that they do.