Blame Tony, Jerry And Arte For 3 Not 5

MLB dot com has gotten into the whole prospect-ranking business. After years of letting Baseball America and John Sickels brag about his great-grandchildren, Bud Selig's site is using spiffy graphics to highlight a Top 100 Prospects List on its heavy traffic main website. There is even an archived link to their 2011 selections... Oooo they've been at this a while.

Three Angels lead the list, with outfielder Mike Trout ranked #3 in all of the sport, infielder Jean Segura #55 and pitcher Garrett Richards at #67. Pretty good - not the best showing by any team, not the worst.

But there are two that got away... Tony Reagins traded Left Handed Starting Pitcher Tyler Skaggs to the Diamondbacks in the summer of 2010 as part of the Dan Haren deal. Of course, Jerry Dipoto had a hand in that as the then-acting General Manager of Arizona's National League team. MLB's #38 selection is Matt Harvey, a 3rd round selection in the 2007 draft who had big bonus money demands that Arte Moreno did not meet. Harvey went in the first round of the 2010 draft, the 7th overall pick by the Mets after a distinguished stint on the college mound. Harvey struck out 156 batters in 125 IP last year split equally between High-A and AA.

Blame Tony, Jerry and Arte that the Angels have 3 and not 5 players in MLB's current Top 100 Prospects.

Skaggs, Trout and Richards was part of the 2009 motherlode draft with 5 picks in the first 48 picks as compensation for losing John Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez and even Jon Garland. One lost aside from that is the Rockies got the 32nd and 34th picks in the first round as compensation for losing Brian Fuentes to the Angels as a free agent signing. One of the picks was Rex Brothers, he of the 13 K/9 in 40 major league innings pitched last season. The two draftees of those first five not on the big radars are the oft-injured but still mashing Randal Grichuk and pitcher Tyler Kehrer who repeated Low-A Cedar Rapids in 2011 and has yet to post an ERA under 4.