The Cape Cod League is one of the best summer baseball leagues for college players. According to the Cape Cod League website there were 197 Cape Cod veterans playing in the majors in 2004 and over 1000 that were playing professional baseball of some sort in 2004.

In 2004 the Blue Jays had 43 players in their organization with Cape Cod experience. This ranked the Jays 3rd in all of baseball, which isn't surprising given their college heavy drafts in the Ricciardi era.

Additionally, as Jon Lalonde noted in the draft review interview, "seeing players swing the wood bat is one of the most important revealing things we can see as evaluators. Seeing them swing aluminum in the spring - as much as you can look at it and say I think this is a good wood bat swing - there’s no substitute for actually seeing them compete against their best counterparts in college in that Cape Cod league to see how they fare with that wood bat. That tells us a lot about how advanced they are as hitters."

"The best ones migrate to that league. It’s a pro style environment. They play every day and it’s much more relaxed. The Cape is more like professional baseball than college baseball and it’s another reason we scout it so extensively."

In the 2005 draft the Jays selected the following Cape players:

Player        Round
Ryan Patterson  4
Josh Bell       6
Bobby Ray       7
Jacob Butler    8
Josh Sowers    10
Dennis Bigley  22
Matt Cooksey   32 
Chris Looze    37

Now that the season has wrapped up, who were the top players this summer?

The Cape League has long been known as a pitcher's league. This year was no different, but here are the standouts among the hitters this summer. Players are sorted by GPA - ((OBP*1.8)+Slg)/4:

Batters	        AB	AVE	OBP	SLG	GPA	BB	K
Bates, Aaron	105	0.333	0.446	0.457	0.315	18	26
Errecart, Chris	99	0.303	0.375	0.556	0.308	10	19
Coghlan, Chris	130	0.346	0.430	0.431	0.301	17	15
Hamilton, Mark	114	0.272	0.408	0.465	0.300	21	19
Still, Jon	158	0.316	0.412	0.443	0.296	25	36
Presley, Alex	129	0.341	0.442	0.388	0.296	20	29
Curtis, Colin	99	0.323	0.437	0.384	0.293	16	15
Kindel, Jeff	134	0.306	0.400	0.448	0.292	13	31
Frost, Baron	140	0.343	0.401	0.443	0.291	13	30
Huffman, Chad	122	0.262	0.416	0.402	0.288	20	30
Emanuele, Chris	103	0.320	0.377	0.456	0.284	8	21
Robbins, Whit	131	0.260	0.382	0.443	0.283	19	25
Dempsey, Jacob	114	0.272	0.403	0.404	0.282	23	45
Pruitt, Braedyn	122	0.287	0.393	0.393	0.275	17	14
Frazier, Todd	148	0.270	0.343	0.480	0.274	16	46
Longoria, Evan	164	0.299	0.331	0.500	0.274	7	30
Lincoln, Brad	107	0.243	0.341	0.477	0.273	16	30
Pettit, Chris	144	0.264	0.367	0.424	0.271	16	38
Camp, Matt	145	0.276	0.385	0.386	0.270	24	35

And here are some of the top starting pitchers, listed by K/BB:

Pitcher	        Innings	ERA	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	K/BB
Huff, David	37.0	1.46	11.9	1.0	0.2	12.3
Sinkbeil, Brett	53.0	2.38	10.0	1.2	0.5	 8.4
Hobson, Gib	49.1	2.55	 9.5	1.3	0.4	 7.4
Lincoln, Brad	54.2	1.32	 9.3	1.7	0.0	 5.6
Buck, Dallas	32.2	3.86	10.6	2.0	0.6	 5.4
Norton, Tim	61.0	1.77	11.4	2.2	0.7	 5.1
Hughes, Jared	50.0	1.62	 9.7	2.0	0.4	 4.9
Bard, Daniel	65.0	1.25	11.4	2.8	0.3	 4.1
Teaford, E	53.2	1.84	 8.0	2.0	0.3	 3.9
Ottavino, Adam	51.0	1.76	 9.5	2.5	0.0	 3.9
Walters, PJ	57.0	2.05	10.1	3.0	0.3	 3.4
Kontos, George	57.0	3.00	10.9	3.8	0.2	 2.9
Miller, Andrew	49.0	1.65	12.1	4.2	0.2	 2.9
LeBlanc, Wade	41.1	3.05	 9.2	3.3	0.7	 2.8
Mozingo, Harold	43.1	2.91	11.3	4.4	0.4	 2.6
Mulvey, Kevin	52.2	2.73	 9.1	4.3	0.3	 2.1

Standouts coming out of the pen, again listed by K/BB:

Pitcher	        Innings	ERA	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	K/BB
Jones, Hunter	11.0	0.00	13.1	0.8	0.0	16.0
Lutz, Derrik	25.0	0.00	14.0	1.1	0.0	13.0
Brown, Brooks	26.2	1.01	11.0	1.0	0.3	10.7
Toneguzzi, C	26.1	2.05	10.7	1.4	0.0	7.8
Latham, Daniel	17.2	2.55	10.5	1.6	0.0	6.7
Lincecum, Tim	39.1	0.69	15.7	2.5	0.0	6.2
Wagner, Mike	31.1	6.61	11.9	2.6	0.6	4.6

(Note: All players listed will be at least college juniors in 2005/2006, and thus draft eligible next season. Also, stats listed do not include playoff games)

The home run and RBI leader this summer was Evan Longoria, not to be confused with Eva Longoria. And yes, I only mentioned this so I could link to pictures of Eva Longoria.

Of those players listed above the top three prospects are likely all pitchers - Dallas Buck, Andrew Miller, and Daniel Bard - who could very well go 1-2-3 to start off the 2006 draft. Of course there's a long time between now and then and a lot of things can and probably will change.