I am back from my trip and we can now resume our prospect list.  There is the pleasant surprise of having a brand new name to throw into the mix: Cuban LHP Noel Arguelles.  I hope to have the final installment of my personal prospect list up later this week (it might get delayed as we arrived home to a burst pipe and 30 inches of water in the basement). When I do get that published I will sqeeze Arguelles in his own special spot.

Dan Duffy won our last poll with a commanding 51% of the vote.

As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP--36%

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B--36%

#3--Aaron Crow--RHP--45%

#4--Eric Hosmer--1B--44%

#5--Will Myers--C--43%

#6--Dan Duffy--LHP--51%

Here are prospects #12-7.  This is where things get really fun as we get to players who you can dream on some.  The next installment will, of course, cover #6-1.  Unfortunately, it won't happen next week because I will be out of the country all week.   So look for it in 2 weeks.  You can probably figure out who the top 6 are, but the question will be what order they are in. Here are my humble thoughts and I invite your questions and comments.

#12--Jordan Parraz--RF--Age:24

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We move on to Prospect #6.  If my math is right, whoever wins this poll should have 42% of the vote.  I'll have prospects #12-7 up tomorrow.

As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP--36%

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B--36%

#3--Aaron Crow--RHP--45%

#4--Eric Hosmer--1B--44%

#5--Will Myers--C--43%

Eric Hosmer gets the #4 position with 44% of the vote.  I figured it would be closer but Hosmer seemed to gradually pull away.

A couple of notes:  first, Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus will have the Royals as his next team for a top 15 prospect list.  The list itself is free and the comments are in the pay section.  I'm guessing the list will come out today or tomorrow.

Later this week, I'll have prospects #12-7 up.

As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP--36%

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B--36%

#3--Aaron Crow--RHP--45%

#4--Eric Hosmer--1B--44%

We move on to Prospect #4.  Aaron Crow won the last poll with a healthy 45% of the vote.  I've added the percentage of the vote each person on the list got--just in case you were curious how popular a choice they were.  As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP--36%

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B--36%

#3--Aaron Crow--RHP--45%

We now cover prospects #18-13.  Some of these players (Herrera, Fortuna, and Sample for example) are in about they same place I would have ranked them last year--or perhaps they even dropped a little bit--not because their performance was bad but there is a lot of competition for spots as we move towards the top 10.  That is a good sign in my opinion.  Your questions and comments are, as always, welcomed.


#18--Kelvin Herrera--RHP--Age:19

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So Mike Moustakas wins with same percentage of votes (36%) that Montgomery won with.  We now move on to #3.  I dropped David Lough from the poll since he got scant support last time.  As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

via royals.mlblogs.com

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B

We cover prospect #24-19 in this installment of the our Prospect List.  I decided to drop adding pics because it was such a headache last time.  We've got some high ceiling players on this section--if even one of them came close to reaching their potential, that would be a good ratio.  As was mentioned in the Community Prospect List comments, it can very hard to know how to rank Carlos Rosa--25, signed for $25,000 and ready to contribute in the big leagues as a reliever vs.  Chelsor Cuthbert--16, signed for $1.5 million and miles away from the big leagues but with a huge ceiling.  Rosa might be a free agent by the time Cuthbert is contributing--but I've got Cuthbert a couple spots ahead--I wouldn't argue with anyone who wanted to flip them around.  I tend to think of a minor league system in tiers--with players within the tier as pretty much interchangeable.  Anyway on to the rankings:

24--Derrick Robinson--CF--Age:22

Robinson is an important figure in the recent history of the Royals draft--even if he never develops into anything special.  Robinson was ranked as a 1st Round talent, but he fell to the 4th Round of the 2006 draft because he had a football scholarship to the University of Florida to play cornerback.  The Royals gave him $850,000 to sign and not play football.  That began a trend of the Royals being willing to dish out big bucks to players who dropped in the draft due to signability (Melville, Esposito--even though he didn't sign, Myers, Dwyer, Simmons, etc.).  It was and is a good strategy and got better as the Royals have (since Robinson) stayed away from giving big bucks to players who main tool is speed.  As to Robinson as a player, the Royals have claimed from the day he signed that he was more than just a speed guy--that they believed he could and would hit.  Speed is his calling card and with that comes what is supposed to be very good defense in CF.  But the bat hasn't developed like the Royals had hoped.  2008 showed some positives as he hit 245/316/322 as a 20 year old in Wilmington.  Those weren't good numbers but they showed some progress from previous numbers (especially with taking a walk).  This year, however he regressed (as you see above).  His power dropped slightly and he took fewer walks.  It actually looked worse at the end of July, then in August he hit 311/362/513 and hit 5 home runs (more than doubling his career total).  The past couple of years, he's posted BABIP that are rather low for someone with his speed.  He'll go to AA next year where it would be good to see him restore those walks and flash his power more consistently.

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Mike Montgomery comfortably gets the call as the Royals Top Prospect on our poll.  He beat out Mike Moustakas and Aaron Crow.  So now the fight for #2 begins.  As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.  I've added a couple of names that were listed in the comment section of the last poll.

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP