The Minor League Analysis We Swore We Wouldn't Do

OK, there's nothing worse than bloggers who tout prospects they've never seen. (Has anybody noticed that our top OF prospect, 19-year-old Jose Tabata at Trenton, has turned into a headcase -- being pulled from games for not running out ground balls. Could it be that he's been reading all the fawning praise heaped on him by self-proclaimed experts?)

I am not an expert. I haven't seen these guys. But... some observations.

The good: We must have somebody down there.

Scranton-Wilkes Barre has the best record in the Triple A International League.

Trenton has the best record in the Double A Eastern League.

Tampa has the third best record in the high-A Florida State League. (2nd place in the division.)

Charleston has the second best record in the South Atlantic League. (2nd in divison)

We probably have the best record overall in the minors. (Too lazy to do meaningless math.)

This could be due to a traditional organization-wide infatuation with winning pennants (though we fired our Trenton MGR, Billy Masse, last season supposedly because he put wins in front of player development.) And Scranton, as usual, has more guys on the way down than up.

Still, wins are wins. Somebody's doing it. We are pouring a lot of talent into the funnel.

The Bad: None of our hyped prospects is having a breakout year.

Brett Gardner is doing OK at Scranton. Same with savior Jesus Montero at Charleston (though, WTF? he's spending a lot of time at DH.) We don't have one hitter absolutely lighting up his league. (In each, there are a few. They're not ours.) Remember what Alphonso Soriano and Nick Johnson did to the Eastern League? You knew they were going to be hitters.

Nobody has broken out, (Tabata looking overmatched at AA) which leads you to wonder if they are real or just figments of the Yankee hype machine.

Pitching? It's harder to get a feel from stats, because ERAs are so erratic. (One bad start can knock a guy into oblivion.) A few, like Eric Hacker and Ryan Pope at Tampa, are doing well. But the arms we hoped would arrive this year -- Alan Horne (hurt), Jeff Marquez (inconsistent), Stephen White (same) Chase Wright (mired at AA) -- they haven't stepped up.

Humberto Sanchez got hurt again. Christian Garcia is just starting to throw. And Brackman, last year's "steal" from the draft, is in Pavanoville.

Relievers JB Cox and Mark Melancon generate talk. Cox has done well, moving up to Scranton. His numbers look good, but he's still giving up base hits. Melacon had been dominating at Trenton, but last night, he went 3.2, gave up 5 hits and 2 ER.

Organizationally, we're great. Somebody has to emerge. It might not be the ones we've heard about.

PS. Best site I've found for tracking this stuff is Pending Pinstripes. Anybody got a better one? Lemmie know.