While perusing The Baseball Prospect Book 2007 By John Sickels, I checked on the status of Royals' prospect OF/DH Billy Butler. Coming off his High Desert campaign, one would expect a drop in his power numbers, and those expectations were met. However, as a 20-year-old in AA, he did have a higher AVG than the more acclaimed teammate Alex Gordon - .331 vs .325.
To me that difference is meaningless, but I wanted to draw some positive attention to Butler relative to the almost-consensus top prospect. (Baseball Notebook ranked Alex Gordon 36th. I'm a big fan of BN, but, even I cannot muster much of a defense of that ranking. A Double-A line of .325/.427/.588 is too good to ignore.) What I found surprising about Butler's 2006 performance relative to Gordon's, and one that may auger a higher profile, is Butler's strikeouts. He whiffed 67 times versus Gordon's 113.
Could Butler be ranked too low based on his age, level and K's?
| Player | John Sickels Top 50 Hitter | Baseball Notebook | Scouts Inc | BA's Org. Top 10 |
| Billy Butler | 7 | 3 | 12 | 3 |