2008 MLB All-Prospect Team

There are many methods for finding the top prospects in baseball.

Some rely on scouting reports, some on statistics, some even mix the two.

What is difficult about trying to find the best baseball prospects is there are so many very talented ballplayers in the minors.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 players spend time in a MLB uniform at some point during any season.

This means there are hundreds of players in the minors who have a good chance at seeing playing time in The Show. Also, there are scores of players working their way through the minors who will probably be MLB starters but who haven't matured yet.

My methods are fairly simple. First, I look for the players who had good seasons in the minors last year. Of those, I note the players who are under a certain age and who have good track records and I assign them a number between 1 and 100. My numbers are an estimation of how I project their future playing ability in the Majors during their peak years between ages 25-29.

Scout lists weren't referenced, only stats.  To avoid any bias I did the numerical rankings twice and blacked out all the names.

The system is fast, based on statistics and not on scouting reports and it is weighted towards the most recent performance of the players in question. Some players are going to be skipped over, some missed entirely. The system is far from perfect, but it is fast. It also does a better job predicting who will be an impact player in the upcoming season than it does trying to predict who will be a Major Leaguer in 2010.

The following players all scored the highest at their respective positions and I'm calling them my All Prospect Team. None of these players has seen substantial service time the Majors. Pitchers aren't included, I will grade the top baseball pitching prospects in future columns.

C: Bryan Anderson
1B: Daric Barton
2B: Matt Antonelli
3B: Evan Longoria
SS: Sean Rodriguez
LF: Jay Bruce
RF: Wladimir Balentien
CF: Colby Rasmus