Top 100 Prospects: John Sickel's Top Rated Hitting Prospects

Fantasy owners, especially those in keeper or dynasty leagues, are always looking for the next top prospect to draft who will carry them the their next (first?) fantasy baseball championship. The prospect experts are in full force right now with John Sickels covering his Top 20 Prospects for each major league team, Baseball America with their Top 10 Prospects and Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein publishing his Top 20 Prospects as well. ESPN's Keith Law will publish his Top 100 Prospects for 2012 at the end of January.

With that said, I will post some of the top rated prospects from each of the experts over the next 3 months leading up to draft day, so today I continue with more of John Sickel's Top rated prospects for 2012. I will limit the list to A, A- and B+ rated prospects.

John Sickels updated top rated prospect list after the jump:

Hitters

A Rating

Jurickson Profar, TEX

Manny Machado, BAL

Bryce Harper, WAS

Mike Trout, LAA

A- Rating

Bubba Starling, KC

Wil Myers, KC

Cheslor Cuthbert, KC

Anthony Rendon, WAS

B+ Rating

Andrelton Simmons, ATL

Nick Castellanos, DET

Miguel Sano, MIN

Eddie Rosario, MIN

Kolten Wong, STL

Oscar Tavares, STL

Xander Bogaerts, BOS

Jonathan Singleton, HOU

George Springer, HOU

Christian Yelich, MIA

Josh Bell, PIT

Anthony Rizzo, SD

Rymer Liriano, SD

Jedd Gyorko, SD

Hak-Ju Lee, TB

Jake Marisnick, TOR

Travis d'Arnaud, TOR

Some thoughts on Sickel's top rated hitting prospects:

The Padres have put together one fine farm system, and recently ESPN's Keith Law opined that they could have the #1 system in baseball. I am publishing Sickels top pitching prospects tomorrow, but they also have 3 B+ rated pitching prospects as well.

John is usually conservative with the ratings he assigns, so you have to consider the strong rating he gave Royals outfield prospect Bubba Starling, even though he has yet to swing a bat as a pro. Some say Starling could become a 30-30 threat if he reaches his potential. Time will tell, as he was a two sport star in high school and spurned a college football scholarship to play baseball.

I am surprised John gave Bogaerts a B+ rating and Cuthbert a B+/A- rating. To me, they are both very at a very similar point in their young careers, as they both should see High A ball sometime in 2012 at the young age of 19. I will be very interested to see where Baseball America and Keith Law rank these two young prospects. Law stated in a recent chat that he see Cuthbert as a future star.