Baseball America prospect rankings by league.

[paul253]

Baseball America is doing their annual top 20 prospects by league. I just wanted to mention that Tyler Thornburg was listed as the 14th best prospect in the Florida St League and Wily Peralta was listed as the 8th best prospect in the Southern League.

 

http://www.baseballameric...spects/2011/2612437.html

http://www.baseballameric...spects/2011/2612445.html

 

I am a bit disappointed in Thornburg's ranking. I know it has no affect on how he actually performs, but having our 2nd best prospect rank so low in a league he is probably old for is very disheartening. The Southern league looked absolutely loaded with several players who were ranked ahead of Peralta actually making significant contributions to playoff teams (Matt Moore, Paul Goldschmidt) and a few others who were very highly thought of prospects so 8 seems like a good place for Peralta. I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on these two or the rankings in general.

[JohnBriggs12]

I think it says a lot about Peralta that he was ahead of Nathan Eovaldi who's younger and was pretty effective as a Dodger call up.

[TooLiveBrew]

14th in the FSL doesn't scream 'disappointment' to me. All of the other pitchers on the FSL list are 20-22, with the exception of Carlos Martinez (STL). I guess my thought, then, on Thornburg, is that him being 22 really shouldn't carry much weight at all. He was a college arm taken in the 3rd round, and iirc was regarded as a bit of a raw project as a pitcher. I think you should focus on the fact that he's lived up to his ceiling so far, not that he's not in the top 10 or whatever. In his first season of full-season play, he dominated at two levels. That's always a good thing. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Look at Peralta, he's living proof you can go from AA to AAA/MLB in just one season. I don't think Thornburg will be knocking on the MLB door in 2012 like Peralta basically was by August or September of '11, but I do think he's going to continue to get good results to go along with his good arm. The Brewers could be a lot worse off than having Peralta & Thornburg as the de facto top two pitching prospects in their system. I say de facto only because Jungmann & Bradley have yet to throw one professional pitch... those guys are good, too.

 

I really really like Thornburg, but I LOVE Peralta. He's going to have to be a very important piece of the puzzle at the big-league level for the Brewers to stay in contention in years to come.