The maelstrom of hot-stove nonsense is upon us. Marty Noble tosses out a slew of names in an MLB.com article. Some would be OK, some wouldn’t. Depends on the cost for most of them, really.
Neil Genzlinger at the New York Times gets a bit sanctimonious over Fox’s coverage of the NFL from Afghanistan. I feel like I’ve read a billion stories bashing athletes and broadcasters for comparing sports to war, and not a single one has ever included the perspective of an actual soldier who’s offended.
People compare stuff to war all the time — the most elementary card game is called “War.” I’d like to imagine the troops are smart enough to distinguish real war from metaphoric war and have more important things to worry about than being offended by Fox’s coverage.
A visibly undead Sammy Sosa surfaced this weekend. Color Omar Minaya intrigued.
Baseball America published its annual top-10 list of Mets prospects. Their site is currently screwy, so here’s the list from Mets Minor League Blog. Anyway, I try not to get too nitpicky about this stuff, because though BA does a great job tracking prospects, trying to order them in any specific way seems like an exercise in futility. Also, beware of spin.
Tedquarters 
Ted,
Something along the same lines as your ‘spin’ colum. My question is how the heck does Fernando Martinez drop behind Mejia and a 17 year old in A-ball on the rankings?
The impatience among fans and media is one thing, although the idea that F-Mart’s window as a prospect is closing is just plain stupid IMO. People have just become so tired of hearing about him that and seeing no results that they get frustrated, but as you point out in your column, the kid signed at 16. He still needs time. The kid is 21 years old and already made the bigs.
But fans and media are one thing, but Baseball America is another, they are supposed to know better than that arent they? Early last year BA ranked him like #20 something in baseball, and early in the year he was all over thier prospect hotsheets when he was tearing up AAA. So basically Baseball America wants me to believe that 91 ABs from a 20 year old kid dropped his value and ranking that much?
Like I said, I expect that type of reaction from inpatient fans and media, but not Baseball America.
Well keep in mind that Adam Rubin wrote the Baseball America report. I trust he had input from the BA team, of course, but I don’t know exactly how the rankings shook out.
I think Martinez’s injury, more than his performance in the Majors, probably hurt his stock. There’s only so long you can keep calling a guy the team’s top prospect if he shows no ability to stay healthy. Like you said, though, 91 at-bats, no matter how bad, are not enough to judge a guy by. Especially not when he’s 20.
But it’s all so arbitrary. Does anyone really think Wilmer Flores is a lock to be a better Major Leaguer than Martinez? I doubt it.
The way I look at it is this, Fmart could spend all of 2010, and all of 2011 in AAA, and still come up in 2012 as a 23 year old, the same age as the this past years top prospect in baseball, Matt Weiters of Baltimore came up.
I understand as much as anyone that we’d love to see something more out of the kid since we’ve been hearing about him so long, but the reality that he just the other day turned 21 years old shouldn’t be overlooked IMO. He’s at this point still younger than the class of stud college juniors drafted this passed June, many of whome head for A-ball, while hes already made it to the majors.
I just like to try to keep things in perspective.