#dylanbundy

The following was written by Draftdaybust's Zander Frost for the Colgate Maroon-News the week of 2.18.13

  It may only be February, but it’s already baseball season for the MLB fanatics out there. This past week saw pitchers and catchers finally report for spring training, and with it the regular preseason prognosticating, hype of prospects, and all around smack talking from teams (or fans of teams) with major offseason additions.

The biggest acquisitions of the offseason have come at the hands of teams based in Toronto, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and the Dodgers/Blue Jays World Series predictions have already been declared across Facebook, Twitter, and the ESPN comment section. Let’s not make any mistake here; the Blue Jays and Dodgers got a lot better, but let’s not forget about where these additions actually came from. The Dodgers have built a team with a bunch of players from the legendary 2012 Red Sox, and the Blue Jays have  filled out their team with the world famous 2012 Miami Marlins, a 38 year old, and the surprisingly-small-headed-given-the-steroids Melky Cabrera.

Of course I’m nit-picking here— the Dodgers and Blue Jays did both get a lot better, and the 38 year old happens to be a 2012 Cy Young award winning knuckleballer (who age notoriously well, just as Tim “I can’t believe it just retired” Wakefield), but the point is that the same people going into spring training with these two League champions already picked probably got October reservations in Boston and Miami last year, too. 

Enough with the small market clubs, let’s talk prospects. There’s a few names that the rabid MLB fans have known for a few years that casual viewers will know by the end of the year. The first is one Oscar Taveras, the lefty outfielder in the Cardinals system who will rise to the majors in the very near future. He appears to be yet another stud developed by St. Louis, batting a... decent .321 with an OPS of .953 in the minors this past season. 

The next is Jurickson Profar, the consensus top prospect in baseball who is being developed as a shortstop in the Texas system. This kid already played some games in the majors last season at age 19, and you can expect to see him on the Texas 25 man at some point this year. He’s blocked by Elvis Andrus and his two years remaining on his contract, but his talent is such that there’s a decent chance you’ll see him in the majors and creating plenty of Andrus-based trade rumors this summer. 

The last is near a dear to my heart as an Orioles fan; the electric Dylan Bundy. He’s a 20 year old righty with a cannon for an arm, top physical condition, and just about every indication that he is a future ace. Since being taken directly out of high school with the fourth pick in the 2011 draft, his stock has only risen, and he’s is now nearly universally considered to be the top pitching prospect in baseball. Now, before anyone gets ahead of themselves, this is the Orioles organization famous for turning high ceiling pitching prospects into legends like Hayden Penn (who?), Adam Loewen (now a AAAA player in the Blue Jays organization), and Jake Arrieta (don’t even get me started), so nothing is set in stone yet, but the new Dan Duquette/Buck Showalter/Rick Peterson regime in Baltimore has fixed Chris Tillman and is actually inspiring faith in Baltimore pitching development for the first time in a long, long while. So it’s okay to get a little excited. 

Enough with the future, let’s talk about the now. There’s a bunch of roster battles to keep an eye on this summer, and I’m not talking about the ongoing case of Pablo Sandoval vs. McDonalds (Bruce Bochy’s no-pandas-served legislation didn’t catch on in San Francisco). 

Anaheim has one of the most interesting battles in their outfield this spring training, with the young and talented Peter Bourjos competing with Mark Trumbo and Vernon wells’ 21 million dollar contract. Vernon Wells is a .682 OPSing abomination at this point who only has a roster spot because no one wants to waste 40 million dollars, so he really only serves to make the Angels’ 25 man roster fit only 24 players. Trumbo’s numbers were good last season on the whole, but he slumped as bad as anyone has ever slumped in the second half last season, batting .183 and .204 and OPSing a measly .501 and .550 in September and August, respectively. I’d bet on Trumbo to end up as the  starting left fielder, but Bourjos could end up as a light-hitting left fielder for them by the end of the season, a la Brett Gardner in New York.

The other that I’m interested to watch is the sad, sad show that will be the New York Yankees catching battle. After the fearsome empire that is the Pittsburgh Pirates stole Russell Martin by paying him with enough money to buy a lifetime supply of poutine, the Yanks are now faced with the three headed catching monster of Stewart, Cervelli, and Romine. I call it Stewminelli. I also call it a fourth place finish. Seriously though, the Yankees will be starting one of these three players for the foreseeable future, and this battle will probably really just end up as a revolving door for the Yankee catcher position this season. The only sadder battle in the league is the Alex Rodriguez’s lifeless corpse vs Kevin Youkilis to play the hot corner in the Bronx, which should be funny considering the fact that Kevin Youkilis and Alex Rodriguez are the Yankees’ third base options this year.

There’s a lot of moving parts in this spring training, and baseball fans should be excited. Non baseball fans should be excited, too, because it means summer is coming. Either way, everyone wins.

  -Zander Frost (@zhfrost)