BoSox AFL Update

With the conclusion of every major league season comes the beginning of the second season of “minor” leagues in baseball – the Winter Leagues. This 2009 off-season, the Sox have placed 17 promising prospects across four leagues, including some of the most exciting names in the organization, such as Casey Kelly, Ryan Kalish, Jose Iglesias, and Yamiaco Navarro. The Winter Leagues are one of the more interesting annual rituals of the MLB, aside from maybe the Rule 5 Draft, as every team in baseball pours their most highly touted prospects into one pool where they duke it out for organizational supremacy.

The Sox New Prospects

With the conclusion of the 2009 MLB Rule 4 Draft signing period, it is time to look at the Sox final bounty.

Included are links, scouting reports and bonuses, as well as analysis...

1-28 OF Reymond Fuentes $1,134,000

Fire Brand’s Top 40 Sox Prospects

Recently, ESPN ranked the Sox system 7th in all of baseball. This was quite a compliment to a team that just this past season graduated four of Baseball America's top five Sox prospects (Buchholz, Ellsbury, Masterson, Lowrie). Led by Director of Amateur Scouting Jason McLeod, the Sox quickly stocked up their system through the amateur draft and international free agency. Their 2008 draft class has arguably the highest potential of any team, and all of that was made possible by the Sox willingness to go over the slot to obtain guys that are considered to have signability issues. Part of the reason that has caused this has been the emergence of top prospects Pedro Alvarez and Matt LaPorta, two unsigned draft picks in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Spending over the slot should be a continuing trend for a team as rich in resources as the Sox, allowing them to remain as one of the top systems in baseball.