Prospects! Part 1: Introduction

Since I've already summed up the Jays' regular season and with Fangraphs starting to compile their top 15 prospects lists, I thought I would go through the Blue Jays system and talk about some of the young players on their way up through the minors.  Most sites do a top 10, 15, or 20 ranking of the Jays' (or whatever team's) prospects with analysis of the players.  Many of these writers are able to see some of these players in person but since I've been away, I have not had any opportunity to make the road (or other kinds of) trips necessary to see these guys live. 

I do consider myself very plugged in to what's going on with the Jays' minor league teams and what's being written about in the blogosphere, but I can only base my musings on what I've gathered from other writers and from examining their readily available stats and scouting reports.  I hope to be able to be able to find some sort of new insight into some of the youngsters in the Jays system, but anything I hope to add will purely be speculative and subjective.  I haven't seen anything of these players live (although if I'm in Toronto during the baseball season, I'll most certainly try to get down to games in Buffalo, New Hampshire, and Lansing) so I may be completely wrong in many respects.  I have players that I've certainly been following, primarily throughout 2012, and I'll try to highlight those players throughout this series.

To try to organize things a little differently than other blogs, I'll recap prospects from each team in the Blue Jays farm system that are either highly touted or at least interesting and I'll also put together my own list of top prospects at the end of this series.  

When considering teams, I'll include players who finish the season there (with a couple of exceptions).  The Jays have a tendency to promote players who are doing well at a level to the next level towards the end of the year to give them a taste of the higher level.  Usually, players who receive these kinds of promotions (e.g., Mike McDade, Jake Marisnick, Sean Nolin) will begin the following year at level at which they ended the season.

Toronto's minor league affiliates (2012):

AAA - Las Vegas 51s (Pacific Coast League)
AA - New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Eastern League)
A+ - Dunedin Blue Jays (Florida State League)
A - Lansing Lugnuts (Midwest League)
Short Season A - Vancouver Canadians (Northwest League)
Rookie + - Bluefield Blue Jays (Appalachian League)
Rookie - Dunedin Blue Jays (Gulf Coast League)

In my next post, I'll begin with the AAA 51s and proceed to the lower levels as I go.