[ayaghmour2]

We kicked off the offseason last night, which means that are new group of top prospects was announced for the offseason. Before we get to that, there is a little housekeeping in the organization to take care of. I let a handful of minor league coaches go, as we had some scrubs left over, but I did end up bringing back the entire FABL staff. Only thing is, team trainer Ed Reed had other ideas, so we'll need a third trainer in as many seasons. No players retired, so we'll continue with 37 of 40 expanded roster spots filled, though I'd be surprised if the roster remained in tact throughout the offseason.

Here's our group of top prospects!

1. RF Dode Caudill (3rd Overall)
2. SS Bill Grimm (22nd Overall)
3. CF Orlando Benitez (39th Overall)
4. CF Bobby Martinez (46th Overall)
5. C Raul Zamora (71st Overall)
6. LHP Jim Place (85th Overall)
7. 2B Bill Tannen (132nd Overall)
8. RF Cliff Coleman (141st Overall)
9. LF Bill Reinhard (144th Overall)
10. CF George Clarke (181st Overall)
11. 3B George McKee (188th Overall)
12. LF Doug Lang (324th Overall)
13. 1B Carlos Morales (337th Overall)
14. RHP Ed Wells (345th Overall)
15. 2B Marv Sandau (356th Overall)
16. RHP Humberto Fonseca (366th Overall)
17. 2B Rafael Zambrano (384th Overall)
18. 3B Bill Welch (388th Overall)
19. LF Gary Allen (405th Overall)
20. SS Sam Pratt (425th Overall)
21. RHP John Roberts (433rd Overall)
22. RHP George Spencer (436th Overall)
23. RHP Charlie Christian (462nd Overall)
24. 1B Jack Drake (485th Overall)
25. LHP Mario Saucedo (487th Overall)
26. RHP George Chism (499th Overall)

Now you may realize this list looks different from the past. Noticeably, there are no last year rankings, but more obvious is the size of the list. Now this generally isn't a concern, our system is usually loaded, but for the first time maybe ever we have less then 40 ranked prospects. Usually it's more, and I cap it off at 40, but this top prospects list is not a 40-best prospect list. It's a list of ranked prospects, truncated at 40 to make my life easier.

As of October 15th, 1962, we have just 26 of the top 500 prospects, though are range of 3 to 499 is probably the biggest. That's why this list looks so short, as I didn't really want to list a bunch of unranked guys and do an unnecessary amount of writeups for prospects I don't care about. I mean, even some of these top 500 guys aren't worth mentioning. Granted, if I get to 26 and feel good about it, I may add a few other prospects that aren't listed so it can be a post of five. Or we'll have the first ever "Top Prospects: 20-26" post. We'll see. Maybe this is a sign that I cover too many prospects and should just do 20 or so.

But beyond a dozen or so guys, most of these guys aren't considered prospects in the sense that I normally consider them. Not really the most inspiring bunch. Despite that, our system ranks 6th, as Dode inflates the numbers and our top 6 guys are in the top 100. Only thing is, just three more in the top 250, as more then half of our prospects rank behind the 323rd spot. Yikes!