Prospect Lists A Plenty

Yesterday I pre-ordered one of my favorite annual book purchases: the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. It's kind of overpriced (like $23 bucks or something) for a product you have to buy every year and that is mostly filled with data about players who will never see the big leagues, but it always has a good feel to it and has a good book smell and is packed with information that gets me excited about future Padre teams.

I'm pretty excited to get this year's copy. Mostly I want to see where Kellen Kulbacki (pictured above) and Kyle Blanks rank. I think those two hitters have Major League bats and could see at bats this season with the Big Club. Kulbacki will start the season with AA San Antonio and Blanks will start with AAA Portland. Kulbacki may be a year away but it's possible Blanks will get a September call up so the team can evaluate whether he or A Gon will be the starting 1B for the Drinos in 2010. The other will be dealt - I hope - for a haul of beasts.

Most everyone and their brother puts out prospect lists these days, all the major publications and all the best bloggers included. Some of the best Padre blogs - Ducksnorts, Friar Forecast, Mad Friars (not really a blog), Padres Revolution - all discuss the minors and do it well. (Gaslamp Ball focuses more on the big league club and that's very refreshing in an old-school way.) Of course DePodesta's blog always talks up the minor league players and draft picks and such.

Reviewing the various lists, here are in my mind the three biggest questions about the Padre prospects:

- what was wrong with Matt Antonelli last season? Was it just a fluke? Will he rebound? Even if he does rebound, will he be a star or just an average second baseman?;

- what is the plan for Blanks? Assuming he mashes at AAA like he has at every other level, will they trade him? Give him reps in LF? Trade A Gon?; and

- will any of the injured pitchers make comebacks? Cesar Carrillo, Matt Bush and Nick Schmidt are all first round draft picks who have had Tommy John surgery in the last few years. If one or two or three of them regain their promise the Padres could have a sneaky strong back of the rotation in a few years.

Time will provide the answers to these questions. Let's hope we like the answers.