Miguel Sano
Showing posts with label Nick Castellanos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Castellanos. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Up and Coming Third Basemen: Part 2
We kicked off our examination of the AL Central's phenomenally impressive corps of talented young third basemen already with a look into Tigers top prospect Nick Castellanos, who MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo had listed as his 10th best third base prospect in all of baseball. Moving on in our countdown we'll be looking at the next prospect on his list;
Up and Coming Third Basemen: Part 1
Last year when I started Central In Focus, one of the first series I ran covered the American League Central's quartet of promising young catchers. I wrote about Alex Avila of the Tigers, Tyler Flowers of the White Sox, Wilson Ramos of the Twins, Carlos Santana of the Indians. And I never even mentioned the Royals Wil Myers who exploded onto the mega-prospect scene after demolishing two levels of A ball during the 2010 campaign in his introduction to full season baseball.
One year later Santana appears to be headed for the stardom that so many expected, and no one would be surprised to see Ramos win the opening day job in Washington after his mid-season trade. Avila remains a platoon option at catcher for the Tigers and with Victor Martinez's presence, that's unlikely to change for the next year or two. Flowers unfortunately saw his persistent problems with strikeouts catch up to him at AAA this year. He remains a prospect but will need to make fundamental improvements to his offensive game if he's ever to become a viable Major League backstop.
This year the Central heads toward 2010 sporting another impressive area of strength, this time at third base. A recent MLB.com article listing their Top-10 third base prospects had the top three spots, four of the top five, and five of the top ten filled with AL Central talent. It's an incredibly impressive layout and all five Central teams are represented. It only seems right that such a talented group of players deserves the same kind of coverage the catchers got last year. Just like last year I'm going to go ahead and run through the five players, in reverse order by the rankings given in the MLB.com article.
One year later Santana appears to be headed for the stardom that so many expected, and no one would be surprised to see Ramos win the opening day job in Washington after his mid-season trade. Avila remains a platoon option at catcher for the Tigers and with Victor Martinez's presence, that's unlikely to change for the next year or two. Flowers unfortunately saw his persistent problems with strikeouts catch up to him at AAA this year. He remains a prospect but will need to make fundamental improvements to his offensive game if he's ever to become a viable Major League backstop.
This year the Central heads toward 2010 sporting another impressive area of strength, this time at third base. A recent MLB.com article listing their Top-10 third base prospects had the top three spots, four of the top five, and five of the top ten filled with AL Central talent. It's an incredibly impressive layout and all five Central teams are represented. It only seems right that such a talented group of players deserves the same kind of coverage the catchers got last year. Just like last year I'm going to go ahead and run through the five players, in reverse order by the rankings given in the MLB.com article.
Nick Castellanos
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