Alright, here we are ready to go for round three of my mid-season evaluations of the top prospect talent. Analysis, as always, is based on the results of a google image search for each player. Greater detail regarding the process and the accuracy of such a system can be found here: http://yourteamsuxmineisrad.blogspot.com/2013/06/mid-season-rankings-visual-basis.html
5. Our 5th up and comer to be evaluated is none other than Michael Choice.
Mr. Choice is a 23 year old outfielder currently toiling away in Sacramento because Billy Beane is spending too much time trying to channel his inner Brad Pitt and find the next fat Jonah Hill super stat nerd. The current outfield consists of Yoenis Cespedes, Coco Crisp and Josh Reddick. Cespedes is good in left and Crisp, although he's old as hell, is still kind of holding it down. The idea that this young guy is rotting in Sacramento while Josh Reddick flirts with the mendoza line is amazing.
I mean, c'mon, he's got his own bobblehead for chrissakes, and what a beautiful bobblehead it is. I did a little bit of research into the bobblehead market. First, it is almost impossible to create a bobblehead that actually looks like the player it's built to represent. It's like cold fusion, they just don't have the technology yet. Honestly, without his name on the one pictured above, I'd think maybe it was Bobby Bonilla or Tony Gwynn. Also, like cold fusion, bobbleheads are extremely expensive. At least Michael Choice bobbleheads are. Each bobblehead is handcrafted by an elderly German fellow who imports baby seal teeth and whale blubber, and that's just to make the base of the figurine. My point here is this: Why would you throw together a bobblehead version of someone if they weren't virtually guranteed high levels of success at the next level? You wouldn't. The bobblehead alone, just by virtue of having Choices name on it would probably put up a better OBP than Josh Reddick.
Michael wisely sticks to the orange/yellow/red portion of the color spectrum and has a piece that modestly announces that he has a little cash to throw around and he's down with J.C., but he's not trying to be the pope or anything.
All things considered, Choice looks poised to make a huge splash in the bigs, and imagine how well he's gonna do playing for the Dodgers in a few years after Billy Beane trades him in the last year of his contract for the rights to the motion picture Moneyball Two Electric Bugaloo.
6. Speaking of the Dodgers, we have Zach Lee dropping in nicely in the 6 spot.
Lee is pretty strange. When I googled him I came up with some interesting Images. A shirtless tattooed hipster showing off his fixed gear bike, a photo of Lee that someone appears to have drawn a bunch of dicks on with a sharpie, and yet another where his face looks like it's been photo shopped onto the body of some kind of primate. I'm not a zoologist, so I don't want to speculate as to what species it actually is. All of these things indicate to me that people are intimidated by him and are lashing out in strange ways. He should be intimidating. His K/BB ratio is "holy shit/sweet baby jesus does he ever throw balls?"
Lee is, in fact, so intimidating that the conversation in the above photo where he's shaking hands with Clayton Kershaw went something like this:
Kershaw: Ohmygodohmygodohmygod you're Zach Lee.
Lee: Yes, I am. Nice to meet you.
Kershaw: Can I, like, touch you or something.
Lee: Sure, why don't we shake hands.
Kershaw: Can I run over to that set of coolers behind you and get you something to drink, or shine your shoes, or wash your car or something?
Lee: No, I've got this bottled water in my left hand, I'm good.
Kershaw: Ok, well it's an honor to meet you, I love your polo. What color blue is that?
Lee: I don't know, but if I don't throw something 105 miles an hour pretty soon the world is going to become a little less awesome, and I can't in good conscience let that happen.
Guy in background scratching his head: I don't know what's happening, but I feel like my life has changed forever, and when Zach Lee leaves this room I'll probably turn to a life of drug and alcohol abuse to try and fill the void that he left in my soul.
Lee is also quite possibly the only guy that could make this hideous star spangled mistake of a jersey look intimidating. Face it. If you could throw 115 with movement, and then drop in an 80 mph yellowhammer with no discernible change to your delivery, you could probably pitch in a kimono if you wanted to.
Expect to see young Zach Lee very soon, and be prepared to watch Vin Scully try and describe this kids fastball, only to discover it has hindered his ability to speak to the point that he can only blurt out random sentence fragments for the 5 seconds after each pitch, thus creating the nickname "The Stroke" for Zach Lee's fastball. Cue the Billy Squier walk-up music.
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