2012 All-AAA Teams

Wil Myers, the 2012 Topps Minor League Player of the Year...
will not make an appearance on one of these teams.

Before I go back and play more Injustice: Gods Among Us, and before I dig deeper into my collection of baseball cards, and before I reevaluate the top MLB players for my second round of All-Star voting (I seem to have a lot of tabs open in my mental browser right now...) I'd like to revisit my ongoing 40-man rosters project. As I've mentioned many times before, only 25 members of the 40-man roster are on the active or MLB roster, which means the other 15 play in some level of the minor leagues. My objective for this post is to examine (in the form of a lineup, how else?) the best players who are currently on MLB 40-man rosters, but who spent a significant portion of their 2012 seasons in the minor leagues. My hypothesis is that this experiment will result in some awesome lineups!

So far I've only gone through players that spent most (or almost most) of their 2012 in Triple-A (AAA), the highest level of the minor leagues. The tricky part about dealing with players in AAA is that the minor leagues are essentially a feeder system for major league talent. So it stands to reason that if a player does well enough in AAA, he will eventually get called up to the majors, reducing his chances to put up more big numbers in AAA. But I'm confident that these two lists (there's one for each of the AAA leagues) include players who performed well enough in the minors, but who could still make an impact in The Show. And of course there's also the commentary section, where I will go over any noteworthy exceptions or honorable mentions.

Starting with the Pacific Coast League, you'll notice that there aren't a whole lot of household names on this list (unless you hang out in my household), which is to be expected in a list about minor leaguers. Before going into the PCL's historically-inflated offense, a word about the color coding and capitalization of the list: a green highlight in the Position column indicates that the player qualifies as a rookie heading into 2013 (i.e. less than 130 AB or 50 IP in the majors). A yellow highlight in the Name column indicates that player joined a new team during the off-season. The all-important Bats/Throws column shows that player's status on his team's 40-man roster: no fill for active, blue for optioned to the minors, and red for 15-day DL. And lowercase letters in both the Level and 2012 MLB Experience columns indicates that player did not play enough games to qualify for a fantasy position, provided there was a fantasy league for the minors.

As I mentioned before, the Pacific Coast League typically produces better-than-average offenses, but that shouldn't take anything away from the top two offensive performers Adam Eaton (not to be confused with the former pitcher with the same name) and Jedd Gyorko (who doesn't share either a first or a last name with any other major leaguer past or present). Both of these players were slated to begin the year in their respective team's starting lineups, and while Gyorko has experienced a bit of a learning curve while playing 3B and 2B for the Padres, he has at least been able to play every day - Eaton has yet to play a game with the 2013 Diamondbacks after suffering an elbow injury prior to the season.

A couple of top performers were involved in transactions this off-season: former Dodgers prospect Jerry Sands was sent to Boston as a player to be named later in last season's mega blockbuster, but was then shipped to Pittsburgh in the Joel Hanrahan deal, where he is currently struggling in AAA (but hey, it's better than season ending surgery, which is what's happening to the guy he got traded for). Middle infielder Jake Elmore was plucked off waivers by the Astros: Arizona could afford let him go, despite his .908 OPS and 32 steals last year, because they netted top shortstop prospect Didi Gregorius in a trade. (Gregorius spent most of his 2012 in AA, which is why he doesn't appear on this particular list.) Rounding out the list of new faces in new places, longtime Cardinals farmhand Andrew Brown signed with the Mets on a minor league deal, was called up early this month, but was optioned to the minors to make room for newly acquired Rick Ankiel.

Although the warm climates of the PCL ballparks make for high offensive production, it's the pitching staff that has had more of an impact in the majors this year. Trevor Bauer (traded to the Indians in the aforementioned Gregorius deal) has contributed nicely to Cleveland's rotation, and the rash injuries that always seems to befall A's starters has given Dan Straily an opportunity to start in Oakland (an opportunity he is currently squandering with an ERA over 7.00). Fellow A's starter A.J. Griffin joins Cardinals phenom Shelby Miller in the pitching division of the honorable mentions, as they were both given their first shot in the show in 2012. While we're on the subject, the best player in the minor leagues last year, Wil Myers (above), does not appear in this lineup because he is not currently on the Rays' 40-man roster (even though Jake Odorizzi, who arrived in Tampa Bay in the same trade, currently is). We should see Myers in the bigs soon enough: even though he's struggling in AAA right now, he would still be an upgrade for the offensively-starved Rays. In the bullpen, you might recognize Jim Henderson as the Brewers' new closer ever since fellow Canadian John Axford lost the mantle before the season's first week was out.

Moving on to the International League, there even fewer household names on this list. The only one who has seen significant major league action is veteran Ramon Ortiz, and the last time he pitched more than 35 innings in the majors was 2007. The only reason the Blue Jays have space for him on their 40-man roster is because their season is already in the pooper. Don't get me wrong, there are a few viable major league contributors on this pitching staff: although currently back in AAA, Tyler Cloyd is the best candidate to take Roy Halladay's spot in the Phillies' rotation, Jeff Locke has an ERA under 3.00 as a starter for the Pirates, and Zach Duke made the Nationals as a lefty specialist. And while Donnie Joseph has some upside (he was traded from Cincinnati to Kansas City for Jonathan Broxton), there's an awful lot of red in the rest of this bullpen.

The all-rookie offense, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Hector Gimenez is the only player currently on an active roster and the only other two players to have reached the majors in 2013 are infielders Cord Phelps and Brandon Laird. However, we do get to experience two more colors: Chase d'Arnaud, the brother of Mets catching prospect Travis (another honorable mention on the PCL team), is highlighted orange to denote his placement on the 60-day DL (and thus technically off Pittsburgh's 40-man roster, but this team was too desperate for infielders for me not to include him). Mauro Gomez has a nice cyan highlight, which means that he changed teams during the season: he was claimed by the Blue Jays in one of their myriad waiver wire moves, but was optioned before he played in a major league game.


So there you have it: a graphical and statistical analysis of the Pacific Coast League's utter dominance over the International League. The next stop on my ongoing analysis of the minor leagues will take me to the AA's trio of the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the Texas League. Whether I write a post about them remains to be seen.