Minor League Level Review (High-A): Concerns about Mason Williams, Tons of Players Hit Disabled List

Every other Sunday, I will be taking a quick look at some of the top prospects at the High-A level, including their stats for the season so far All statistics are courtesy of Fangraphs.com, and are through the games of Friday, 5/10/13.

• Josh Norris (@jnorris427) of the Trentonian provided notes from a scout about a number of the Yankees' prospects, with this post specializing in the ones at High-A Tampa. The most interesting to me is the info he received on Yankees' prospect Mason Williams:

I was talking to (another) scout and he was like ‘Mason Williams is hitting like Ichiro.' He's taking a step toward first. I didn't see him drive one ball, not one. He can really play center still. He can run. He throws good, but I'm concerned with the off-field makeup. He didn't run anything out. He trots down the line almost every at-bat. Every groundball, you look (at your stop watch), and you're like ‘I can't get a good time off this because he doesn't run.'

Definitely not what you want to hear about a top prospect, and definitely worth watching to see if it continues throughout the season.

• I wrote about Miguel Sano last week, and all he keeps doing is hitting home runs and, really everything else that's thrown his way as well.Twinkie Town recapped what Sano and the rest of their top 25 prospects did this week on the 8th.
• A name that is really, really interesting to me is the Astros' Nolan Fontana. The approach is very good, and his strike zone judgment appears to be good so far. Whether his ability to draw all these walks is just him seeing a lot of pitches or not remains to be seen, but I love seeing that kind of slash line so far.
• Courtney Hawkins is absolutely amazing to me at this point, having hit 7 home runs and stuck out 45 times already He's currently on the disabled list with an injured shoulder.
• We saw a number of top prospects placed on the disabled list, including Austin Hedges, Deven Marrero, Delino DeShields, and Nick Delmonico of the Orioles, who has been on the concussion DL since April 19th.

• We saw two different pitchers in two different organizations get promoted to AA in the past two weeks, as both Archie Bradley of the Diamondbacks and Matt Wisler of the Padres were sent to their respective affiliates. Bradley has since gotten hurt trying to slide into a base, but has not been placed on the disabled list as of Saturday afternoon.

• Craig took a look at Orioles' pitching prospect Eduardo Rodriguez this week, and I agree with Craig that he could move up top 100 lists if his season progresses the rest of the way as it has so far.

• Nick Kingham is a name that gets lost a bit in the Pittsburgh system with the three potential aces they have in the organization, but could be a mover as well if he can keep his control in check.

• Victor Payano has struck out at least 8 batters in four of his seven starts so far this year, including 9 in his last outing against Salem on Friday night.

• Kyle Crick and Tyler Anderson are both on the disabled list at this time.