Our Top 20 is comprised from a transcript from the March 29, 2011 LuchTime HaloTalk radio show held every Tuesday Live and linked here at Halos Heaven. Our Top 20 is tabulated exclusively by our minor league expert analyst Ryan Ghan.
RYAN GHAN: I've got Randal Grichuk at number 11.
He's lost a little bit of ground from last year, but he remains a very good hitter. I think that's the thing that people forget about when they're talking about him. Everyone focuses on power, but the guy has a really good, natural feel for hitting. Sure, the strikeouts are high. He doesn't walk as much as we'd like to see him. But he's still hit around .300 wherever he's played, and always against much older competition. That's no fluke: he has the bat speed and the explosiveness to make consistently hard contact. I've seen him make an effort to work counts and lay off pitchers' pitches. While he's got some work to do in that area, he's clearly conscious of what he needs to do in order to bring his game to the next level. He remains a pretty good bet to be a high impact player down the road. Again, like my number 12 pick Chevez Clarke, high risk, high reward.REV HALOFAN: He's got a great swing but now, you don't see the Angels as letting people cut in line and move through the system with the idea of being a DH. They're sticking him in the field and insisting that he work on being a fielder as well, correct?
RGHAN: That's true. When he was drafted, there were some knocks on his arm strength. But he made strides last year, working on his mechanics, his footwork, and he added a lot of carry to his throw and they're now putting him in right field. He'll never be outstanding out there. He won't. He's not that fast. But he could very well be average out there. He's got a work ethic. He's got coaches working with him. He could be a perfectly average major league left fielder, perhaps slightly below average in the right field because his arm... there's cap on how much arm strength he can build.
REVHF: There's not a cap on that bat, is there?
RGHAN: No. The guy can swing it. That said, there are some issues. I'm not going to pretend there aren't issues. The strikeouts. He pulls the ball all the time. He made a good effort to use the whole field back in 2009, but this past year, the 2010 season, he was a dead pull hitter. He just pounded the ball to the left side, and when you do that, you're going roll over on a lot of pitches. So, he hits more grounders than many of the best power hitters do. Kind of like Mike Napoli, for example. And like Napoli, those grounders were hit hard enough to find holes, at least in Arizona and A-Ball. So it would be nice to see him start to use the whole field a little bit more, try to spread that power out, become a true pole to pole power guy. But I see those as correctable issues. His offensive ceiling is still sky high.
Randal Grichuk is currently injured with an unspecified though non-chronic injury, in 522 Plate Apppearances over parts of two season in Rookie Ball and the Low-A Midwest League, Grichuk had an OPS of .901 and he turns 20 years old on August 13.