Because of the potential of hurricane Irma the FSL is cancelling the championship series. The two semi final winners will be co-champions.

Prepared a pre-AFL Top 10 prospects list for your criticism and viewing pleasure. Lots of tough choices; this list might have a bit of "what have you done for me lately" influence to it. I'm still high on the potential upside of the struggling and/or injured pitching quartet of SRF, Greene, Maese, and Zeuch, but went with a safer and closer last three to round out the list.

1. Vlad Guererro, 3B
2. Bo Bichette, SS
3. Nate Pearson, RHP
4. Anthony Alford, OF
5. Daniel Jansen, C
6. Ryan Borucki, LHP
7. Logan Warmoth, SS
8. Reese McGuire, C
9. Teoscar Hernandez, OF
10. Thomas Pannone, LHP

There are some morsels in this article on Bo Bichette.  Conditioning is the item that he intends to work on more next year (he felt that he wilted in the Florida summer heat despite growing up there).  Seems like a good idea.

He managed OK in Lansing this past April, so New Hampshire this coming one should be doable. 

No criticism from me, ayj.  Interesting list. 

50 steals for Fields.  At the very least, he looks like a potential 5th OF / pinch runner.  Since September 1st there have been 2 or 3 glaringly obvious pinch running opportunities missed, and that's just in the games I've been watching.  Hard to get excited for Sept ball this year, but I do enjoy seeing the kids in action.  Urena looked more polished than I expected, and Ramirez is fascinating .... what makes him so difficult to hit?

love the list, AYJ.

But I still go with Zeuch and Maese ahead of Borucki and Pannone in the top 10 there.

That's a good article on Bichette, thanks for sharing it Mike. I like how Zwelling delivers the propaganda, with lines like "When next year’s pre-season lists are released, it’s not out of the question that Bichette could be a top-20 prospect, and possibly top 10" and "Bichette had a better statistical season than Guerrero". Both are technically true, but seem to mislead the casual fan reading the article (especially the latter, because Guerrero was significantly better at A+ than Bichette). You'd probably have to go back to 2009 (BA had Snider #6, Arencibia #43) to find 2 Jays prospects so high in the rankings, and Vlad & Bo should clock in with a much lower total than that.

Good list AYJ.

I really don't understand why L Warmoth is ranked so high. Higher on other lists. #4.
I know that it is not his fault to be in SS ball. He will be 22 tomorrow. Sept 6. J Palacios is 1 month older and had slightly better numbers in Vancouver last year. A CF that had a very good finish to this year. So IMO he had a good year. Warmoth will have his challenge next year.

Pearson is young, has great stuff and fantastic results.

Warmoth & McGuire are off for me. SRF is on because he is close. AA and young. He could be a good ML starter. Greene is on. 100 mph fb. Also young. His bad finish must tell him that he has to change and improve something.

Greene is one of my favorites. I don't know what he is doing wrong. Just throwing harder and harder will not work as a SP, I guess.

"I really don't understand why L Warmoth is ranked so high. Higher on other lists. #4. I know that it is not his fault to be in SS ball. He will be 22 tomorrow. Sept 6. J Palacios is 1 month older and had slightly better numbers in Vancouver last year. A CF that had a very good finish to this year. So IMO he had a good year. Warmoth will have his challenge next year."

Because scouting does matter as well. Scouts liked Warmoth, he was drafted in the first round and then he hit in the low minors. There's nothing to knock him off of the "good prospect" mantel yet. Stats mean something but not close to everything especially when talking about small differences and especially lower in the minors. Scouts can often see if someone is not getting around on good fastballs, has trouble with good breaking balls, someone who might have to move to a weak defensive position, etc....I'd be surprised if Warmoth is not on pretty much every top-10 list next year.

Glevin, I agree with all of that and I also agree he will be on everyone's offseason top 10 list. However, I won't be surprised if he isn't on next year's top 10 list.

so much depends on the scouting of his defense though. he'll start the year in the top 10 but as nedt year he'll already be age appropriate for AA, he's going to have to hit more than he did this year.

scouting matters, but that cannchange quick, ane i bet you that despite scouting consensus having Warmoth ahead of pearson on draft day, pearson gets ranked higher already.

and that pearson gets top 100 consideration while warmoth doesn't.

I was going over Alford's numbers, and specifically the wild swings in his K%, tryinh to figure out whether the new lower level was sustainable or fluke. And i found something that really surprised me, thanks to fangraphs giving us awesome swinging strike data now.

In his first 3yrs ('12-14) when he wqs playing football and only got a handful of pro at bats each year, he struck out near 30% of the time AND had near a 30% swinging strike rate.

In his first full pro year, those numbers looked like this:

'15 (A): 232pa, 25.9k%, 25.4swst%
'15 (A+): 255pa, 19.2k%, 23.9swst%

So a bit better, but still not very good and a bit of a worry, with all thr numbers consistent with each other.

His 2nd full year as a pro, though, gets a little weird:

'16 (A+): 29.2k%, 11.1swstr%

So his Ks go through the roof and look like a major flaw....except when it comes to the actual worrisome part of strikeouts (i.e. missing the damn ball), what we actual see there is a MASSIVE improvement to a very good swst% rate. what looked like a step backwards or a flaw becoming exposed may actually have been a significant improvement.

And then what happens this year?

'17 (AA): 289pa, 15.6k%, 11.3swst%

The K rate comes atumblin' all the way down to match the swst%, which maintained itself from the previous year.

So the drastic improvement in K rates this year may not just be an improvement this year, but actually an improvement that has gone on 2yrs running now. Not some crazy fluctuation in performance but just a straightline improvement coming with experience and development.

That makes me feel a whole lot more comfortable with the Krate improvement being a legit sustainable one. That is great.

I wonder if swst% is predictive of future K% like this in general.

I think the scouting on Warmoth's defence is pretty easy. He can play SS but due to issues with arm strength and, to a lesser extent, range he has little chance of providing value through his defence. If he moved to 2B it might well be a different story though. I think the huge unknown with Warmoth is whether he has any power or patience skills to go with his BA/contact skills. He's shown little of either in Vancouver but it's early days.

Nice breakdown Ugly.  Alford is a clear number 3 to me and those numbers solidify that thought. 

Pannone and McGuire are the guys that I don't see in the top ten, otherwise AY Jackson's list looks good.  I'm still pretty high on SRF and think Urena needs to be on any top ten list. 

Great insight on Alford's contact improvements, ugly. I think the lowered K-rate this year might be a reflection of an improved 2-strike approach.

As impressive as his improvement is, 11.3% is still above the MLB average, and so you'd expect a higher-than-average K% with that degree of swing-and-miss. Alford needs to continue to make progress in this area, unless he develops significantly more power.

On McGuire, it will be interesting to see how he does in winter ball - a good showing there would help confirm his offensive step forward.

Ugly, thats some pretty cool info on Alford and it is much appreciated. He's the clear number 3 prospect to me.

As for Warmoth I think he shot up the prospect rankings early because of his hot start and where he was taken in the draft.He had a July OPS of .982 (13 games) and an August OPS of 0.681 (23 games), so which Warmoth shows up next season?

The Vancouver playoff series will now have all games played in Vancouver due to air quality issues in Spokane because of forest fires. Spokane will be the home team for game one in Vancouver.

Blue mood in Dunedin. The Jays took a 5-0 lead in the first but Tampa chipped away tying it in the ninth and at this point scoring three runs in the tenth.