Arizona Fall League 2014 Season Preview

Friend of the Blog, Wallee Wright, is a long-time Astros fan and Arizona resident who has previously weighed in with his observations about the Arizona Fall League. Today, he gives us his excellent insight into the rapidly approaching AFL season.

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This coming Tuesday, October 7, the Arizona Fall League opens with three teams in each of two divisions competing for a place in the November fifteenth Championship game at Scottsdale Stadium. Our Astros are teamed up with the Arizona D-backs, Minnesota Twins, Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins in providing players to the Salt River Rafters, and, despite the performance of their parent clubs this past season, they are likely co-favorites with the Mesa Solar Sox to win the Eastern Division title and a trip to the championship game.

In addition to the Astros’ contingent headed up by Mark Appel, Vincent Velasquez and Rio Ruiz the Rafters will include the number one rated prospect in minor league baseball, OF Byron Buxton from the Twins, and number nine overall, RHP Archie Bradley of the Diamondbacks. The Rocks have assigned their second best prospect per MLB.com, twenty-sixth ranked RHP Eddie Butler, giving the Rafters a highly-rated pitching corps to combat the Solar Sox’ hitter-heavy roster. Left-Hand Pitcher Mitch Lambson, RHP Tyson Perez, C Tyler Heineman, and OF Andrew Aplin round out the regular roster contribution of your Astros, with INF Joe Sclafani on the Taxi Squad and eligible to play only on Wednesdays.

The Mesa Solar Sox includes four Top-100 prospects and 18 Top-20 players jointly provided by the Oakland A’s, Chicago Cubs, Toronto Blue Jays, LA Angels and the Washington Nationals. The Angels sent six of their Top-20 prospects and, along with Oakland, appears to have provided the most in the way of top talent and throwing arms to this position-player-heavy team. The Cubs did send former A’s top prospect Addison Russell, the number five rated prospect overall, but only two other Top-20 prospects from their reputed collection of major-league-ready talent.

Notwithstanding the Pittsburg Pirates sending four of their top twenty prospects to the AFL this year the balance of the Scottsdale Scorpion roster provided by the Mets, Yankees, Phillies and Giants does not appear to be a threat to take home the divisional title. This theory will be tested early as the Scorpions travel to Salt River Fields at The Talking Stick Resort (whew!) to take on our Rafters on opening day.

In the Eastern Division the Surprise Saguaros appear to be loaded with five Top-100 prospects shipped in by the Cincinnati Reds, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, and San Diego Padres, with the Boston Red Sox making a lesser contribution to fill out the roster. Though the Saguaros appear light on pitching their position players should reflect the historically offensive-minded character of the Reds, Rangers and Red Sox.

Joining the Surprise (that is a town here in the Valley of the Sun, not an opinion) team in the east are the Glendale Desert Dogs and the Peoria Javelinas. The Desert Dogs look to live up to their name as the Dodgers, Brewers, White Sox, Tigers and Orioles showed no apparent interest in contributing their top talent as only two players on the roster are Top-100 prospects … though one of those players is the younger brother of Astro-killer Kyle Seager, Dodger High-A hitting machine Corey Seager.

The Javelinas are only modestly better stocked if prospect ratings are to be believed though Kansas City did its best to load them up by providing two of the Top-100 and five of their own Top-20 prospects. Cleveland included their top prospect, infielder Francisco Lindor, but St Louis, Atlanta and Tampa Bay did little to improve the quality of the Peoria roster.

So the East-West Championship game could shape up to be a test of the old axiom that ‘pitching wins titles’ if the Salt River Rafters do meet the Surprise Saguaros in a one-game finale in November. Of course there’s another homily about championships being won on the field, not on paper so I suppose we’ll have to go ahead and play 30-plus games over the next six weeks to determine the 2014 Arizona Fall League Champion. Go Astros … I mean Rafters.

Submitted by WTHB's Arizona correspondent, Wallee Wright.