Heading into the bottom of the seventh inning in Vancouver the Boise Hawks led 7-3; Game One of the Northwest League Championship Series was there for the taking… and then the wheels came off. Vancouver scored seven times in that seventh inning and dealt the Hawks a 10-7 loss. The two teams resume play in Boise on Saturday night.
In other news, Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com has released his newest league and team top prospects lists, and the Cubs unsurprisingly do quite well. Five players (Javier Baez, Albert Almora, Brett Jackson, Arodys Vizcaino, and Jorge Soler) made the league Top 100. That’s a clear sign that the farm system is trending in the right direction.
There were some notable omissions from the Cubs list, however. Juan Carlos Paniagua should be a candidate to be a league Top 100 guy, but he is no where to be found even on the team list. I suspect that is more a result of when he signed and when he actually started playing than it is a commentary on his abilities. There is a good chance this list was written before Paniagua ever appeared in a game for the AZL Cubs.
More curious is the omission of Christian Villanueva. The third baseman had just sneaked into some Top 100 lists before the Cubs traded for him, but despite that he does not appear even on the Cubs’ list at all. His season numbers are not impressive, but rankings are as much about tools and potential as they are about numbers. I doubt Villanueva missed the Cubs’ Top 20 by much.
Keep in mind as you scan the list that the Cubs really do have a very, very deep farm system. A guy like Ronald Torreyes is still a legitimate prospect despite not making the Cubs’ Top 20. In a lot of other farm systems he could be a candidate for the Top 10; the Cubs are just that deep.
[Brett: And if you haven’t gotten enough parsing of this list, I’ll have my thoughts later this morning.]