I couldn't get to the AFL recap last night as I was at the Phillies-Dodgers game. Why is it that it is whenever one wears the colors of the opposing team, all you get is "Dodgers suck!"?
Instead, I have Keith Law's analysis of the Cubs SS Starlin Castro from his article over at ESPN today:
Starlin Castro is a future star. He won't turn 20 until March but was one of the best and most impressive hitters I saw in Arizona. He has excellent hand-eye coordination and can keep his hands inside the ball even when pitchers try to work him inside. His swing can get long on balls away, and he wraps his bat, but he makes a ton of contact and squares up on a lot of pitches out of the zone. He showed he can stay with sliders from right-handers -- this is good, because I saw way too many guys last week who could hit fastballs but not same-side breaking balls -- and showed signs of future power even to the opposite field. At shortstop, he has good lateral range, especially to his right, and a 65-70 arm on the 20-80 scale. There's still a significant amount of projection here; he slugged .392 (.093 isolated power percentage) this year between high Class A and Double-A. He is, though, one of the best shortstops in the minors. (I heard a few comparisons of Castro to Alfonso Soriano, and although there's some physical resemblance, Soriano has a longer swing and always has been a bit of a hacker, while Castro has better bat control and ability to adjust to changing speeds.)
He's someone to target come draft day for leagues that have minor league drafts. Here are his minor league stats from 2009:
AB-469
Runs-56
HRs-3
RBI-49
SB-28
AVG-.299
OBP-.342
SLG-.392
OPS-.734
Law also talks about the Cards Daryl Jones-here's a snippet:
Daryl Jones is a strong, athletic outfielder with excellent bat speed and strong hands and wrists. My one concern is power: He didn't hit for much this season (his regular season was derailed by a quad strain), and he's already pretty strong, showing good power in BP but not as much in games.