Welcome to the Batters Box top 30 Blue Jay prospects for 2011. Eight of your trusted minor league correspondents pooled their votes to come up with the list. The same trusty eight shared the task of writing the prospect descriptions you see below.

In total, forty-two prospects received at least one vote.  Twenty of the top thirty were named on all eight ballots.  There can be plenty of debate as to who should have made it, particularly here, in the bottom 10.  We hope the wisdom of our crowd has delivered a great top thirty.

As usual we have split the top 30 into three installments, running Monday through Wednesday. On Thursday we will look at some prospects that did not make the list but are favourites of one of our writers.

We hope you enjoy the list and the discussion.

It's commonplace to say that the MVP will (or should) come from a contender. Are you wondering just how often it does?

Wonder no more.

Once again, we delve into the playoff milieu with a prediction contest. Fame! Glory! Fabulous Prizes!* All await should you correctly predict who will win a series of series!

*Warning: prize is not fabulous.

Maybe not the most exciting day in major league history, and both the Rays and Cardinals could be history by the time the LCS begins. But pretty cool anyway. 

And why did it happen? A tale of four teams...

The 2011 Toronto Blue Jays concluded their season with a 3-2 defeat of the Chicago White Sox this afternoon and finished the year at .500 on the nose. The White Sox held a 2-1 lead entering the ninth, but Chris Sale was unable to find the strike zone, allowing Mark Teahen and Adam Loewen to both draw walks with the bases loaded. Shawn Camp earned the win, as Brandon Morrow struggled with his control. Frank Francisco notched his 17th save, while Jose Bautista was held hitless, but drew his 132nd walk of the year.

... and unfortunately that brings out the worst in some writers.

With the absence of minor league updates I am having withdrawal symptoms, so I decided to look at some minor league hitters stats.  I read an article around a month ago that looked at numbers in the lower minors and calculated which numbers mean something in predicting future success.  I cannot find the story now, but as I remember it the two main numbers with meaning were age relative to league and strikeout rate.  Or to put it another way, if a player is young for the league, and if he can put the bat on the ball, that is a sign of future success.  I looked at those numbers for all of the Jays minor league teams and the results are below.

Hitters are evaluated based on five tools, but one tool is the most important, the hit for average tool.  Some players can fill a utility role as a great defender, some can find a role as a power bat with a low average, but most players in the majors can hit for average.  A minor league players batting average might not be a true indicator of future success in the majors.  Particularly in the lower minors hitters can take advantage of weak fielders, inconsistent pitchers, and bad fields.  But ultimately if you can put the bat on the ball, you have a better chance of success at higher levels.

If you believe this study, your answer is yes.

Playing out the string here folks, both on the field and in the Advance Scout (sorry! Though not actually.) The Jays need to win one to finish exactly .500, and at least two to surpass that arbitrary but oh-so-fantastic mark. Otherwise let's just hope for the Red Sox to lose I guess?

Thanks for sticking around for this half (ok, third) season of Advance Scouting, we'll see you next year, assuming the robotpocalypse hasn't happened by then.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with an Advance Scout.

Once more, we assess the work of This Year's Crew, and as always we salute the great Dave Till who used to provide this very service on a monthly basis. Monthly!

I know I am not worthy to... dust his keyboard?

The Baseball America league top 20's started last week.  This thread will capture all the relevant Blue Jay rankings and comments.  Blue Jays listed so far:

GCL - Adonys Cardona #8

GCL - Joe Musgrove #13

Appy - Noah Syndergaard #4

Appy - Chris Hawkins #11

Appy - Aaron Sanchez #12

Northwest - Justin Nicolino #1

Midwest - Jake Marisnick #3

Midwest - Drew Hutchison #14

FSL - AJ Jimenez #10

FSL - Drew Hutchison #13

FSL - Deck McGuire #17

Eastern - Travis d'Arnaud #2

Eastern - Anthony Gose #3

Eastern - Henderson Alvarez #10

Eastern - Adeiny Hechavarria #19

PCL - Brett Lawrie #1

PCL - Eric Thames #15

That is 17 total Blue Jay prospects on the league top 20's. 18 seems to be the highest number.

 

The Advance Scout's truncated season begins to wind down as the Jays head to St. Pete's for their penultimate series. Tampa Bay is 2 games behind the Red Sox for the American League Wild Card with six to play, actually quite a formidable deficit. Tampa started the month off 5.5 behind before narrowing the gap thanks to the Red Sox mini-collapse. Fun fact: the Red Sox are 4-14 in their last 18, and since August 27th have won one game in which they scored fewer than 9 runs. So maybe Tampa has a shot, although they get the Jays and the Yankees while Boston gets the Yankees and Orioles. Still, the Bosox lost three of four at home to the Orioles this past week, and Tampa Bay is, statistically speaking, likely to go 4 and -1 against the Jays if recent history is any indication.

Every night in my dreams, I Advance Scout you.

That's my prediction. And in truth it is not altogether obvious to me that Bautista deserves the MVP award this season.

The Blue Jays have a new logo for next, per sports apparel blog Uni Watch. Check it out after the jump.

Doug Davis is the Blue Jays minor league field coordinator.  He has joined us several times this year here on da Box, most recently in August.  Davis was in town on the weekend for the Webster Awards ceremony and dinner.  I had a few minutes with him before the on field presentation on Saturday at the Rogers Centre.   The ceremony crept up on us so it is a little bit of an abbreviated discussion compared to most.