Sox Top 10 Clearinghouse

Prospectors are all over the place on him, some see him as a back-end type or even a reliever

By that logic Bard is ill-suited to be a Major League starter.

Scout-based prospecting tend to rely upon tools and project ceilings

I saw Barnes a number of times as an amateur and he’s very impressive. #2 quality stuff/upside. Nice kid, hard worker and durable build – a mature, athletic pitcher’s build that might even have some projection left. Good 4 seam that I saw him get up to 97 with even in freezing temperatures. 2 seam has some good life on it and he gets swings and misses on it throwing it low and out of the strikezone. His CB flashes really well and can be a plus pitch/hammer but he too often throws it for strikes instead of using it as a chase pitch. Shows some feel for a CU and I’ve seen him break out some very nice looking fades but its not a consistent offering – mostly because he didn’t need it much, often getting outs with his two power pitches. He’s a very promising pitcher and I’m really high on him. Both Jeff and I had Barnes very high on our draft boards. I’m not sure its reflective of much, as the players in this system are pretty tightly packed and of similar quality.

People really seem down on Ranaudo… not the scouts I’ve talked to and I think this is super overstated. He was never an Ace projection type, even before he got hurt. He was a big guy with some very good stuff who didn’t consistently dominate like he should. Nothing much has changed about him and he remains inconsistent – which is a reason you’ll find varying opinions depending on how he looked that day. He flashed the “good” Ranaudo on the Cape in 2010 and that’s the stuff and velo the Sox hope he will grow to consistently bring. He’s similar to Barnes as he flashes #2 kind of stuff but it might be more likely he’s a #3 because of inconsistency in stuff & command. That would be a very valuable pitcher, though I have Barnes higher as I think he’s got a greater chance to be an impact type of arm.

Somewhat humorously, Henry Owens is a prep pitcher with the prep pitcher version of many of Ranaudo’s flaws. Big guy who has flashed some great velo but doesn’t sit there and often works low 90’s, and has flashed some great stuff but doesn’t consistently get the results you’d expect him to. I’m a big fan of Owens as well… these guys are prospects. If they didn’t have those flaws they wouldn’t have got to us. The hope is they figure it out. Steve Fiorindo from my site saw a lot of Owens as an amateur. On my draft board I had Barnes 7th, Swihart 14th and Owens 21st… so I loved what the Sox did with this draft.

& fwiw, I don’t want to speak for Jeff, but this was the second team list we did and I think he’s come around to preferring Bogaerts now as we got more opinions and finished our top 100 work. The last team list (SEA) is going up tomorrow and then we’re doing updates to the lists on Tuesday dealing with all the trades and players who consequently slipped through the cracks (ie Brad Peacock, AJ Cole, Nestor Molina) and then farm system rankings on Thursday.

At this point I’m believing that his defense is underrated. He’s not going to be a gold glove catcher, but he’s at least Victor Martinez, maybe VMart with better control of the running game. The bat looks legitimate in every way, I can’t accept a player with the potential of VMart being ranked that low on the list behind so many players who either haven’t played an inning of ball yet or aren’t even 20 years old.