See Ya At The Arizona Fall League Symposium

[Greg Ambrosius]

This week is the Arizona Fall League Symposium in Phoenix, sponsored by USA Today and started by Ron Shandler and Rick Wilton. This is always a great kickoff event for all of us as we see the best prospects in the game and get our mojo started for the upcoming season. I'm heading to Phoenix tomorrow and will meet up with some other speakers and attendees tomorrow afternoon at Scottsdale. See ya there if you're getting in for that game.

With any luck there will be a Game 7 on Wednesday night. That would be a lot of fun with a bunch of baseball nuts in the house. Thursday morning has the BaseballHQ crew meeting at Mesa for the afternoon game and the welcome reception at Salt River Fields on Thursday night. Should be fun.

The NFBC is hosting a pair of Draft Champions Leagues on Friday night after the XFL Draft. Those are always a lot of fun and the winner of each league earns a free pass to next year's AFL Symposium. Sign up for one of these when you get to the conference because we have only 30 spots available.

I'll post this weekend about some of the top prospects we've seen. Looking forward to the weekend, which is capped off on Saturday night at the Futures Game. Many of these prospects will be in the majors next year and on your fantasy teams soon.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Glad to see so many familiar NFBC faces in Phoenix this weekend. Mr. Dave Potts is in the house and looking like a million dollars!! Mike O'Connor is here, Perry Van Hook, Brian Feldman, Matthew Modica and a whole lot more. Good to see everyone.

Man, there's one prospect who has everyone buzzing down here. Yankees' 2013 first round pick Aaron Judge out of Fresno State is the most impressive physical specimen I've seen in a baseball uniform this side of Giancarlo Stanton. He's like Stanton but taller. He's 6'7", 230 pounds and he plays right field with a cannon of an arm. Yesterday in Mesa at the Cubs' new spring training home, he hit two home runs, walked and threw out a speedster at the plate on a laser from deep right field. I mean he had the whole place buzzing. Very, very impressive. He hit 17 homers with with 78 RBIs, a .308 average and a .419 OBP between A and Hi-A last year. He's headed to Double-A this year and he should be fun to watch. I have to believe that there are holes in this guy's swing, but he really is something to look at right now.

We've seen some really good baseball so far and I'll post more shortly. Outside of Judge, the most impressive thing is this new Cubs' spring training facility in Mesa. Wow, they just keep building bigger and better ballparks in Arizona. Between this place, Salt River Fields, Glendale, Surprise, etc., these parks are just getting too cool. But this Cubs' complex is really, really impressive. Now if they could just get traffic to move quicker around there.

Back to the seminars. Good fun. Oh, and I promise NFBC Rules, Prizes and Cutline info will all be posted when I get back next week. We'll unveil 2015 next week and get Registration live the following week. All is on schedule for an earlier start this year and that includes the draft room. We're excited about the upcoming season and can't wait to get it started. Thanks all.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Fun matchup today at Salt River: Mark Appel vs. Aaron Judge. Appel looked sharp in the early innings and was even hitting 98 on the radar guns in the first inning, but he walked a few and gave up some hard hits. He looks very good, but he definitely needs more time in the minors and he needs to pitch lower in the strike zone more often. A lot of pitches were up. Judge lined out hard to the SS in the first inning, walked the next two times and was HBP. He has real good plate discipline and a nice, short compact swing with power. Pretty good matchup to witness.

[Edwards Kings]

Prepping for a long, hard winter (Braves baseball-wise). Any nuggets out of Arizona on Kyle Wren?

[Greg Ambrosius]

What a great trip to the Arizona Fall League Symposium. The weather was just perfect (91 the first two days of games, 80s after that) and so was the camaraderie and baseball on the field. Man, if you ever get a chance to come to this event you should. It's just a fantastic event.

I thought the baseball on the field was also the best in the dozen or so years I've been going to the AFL. There were some great power hitters, some great defensive plays and solid pitching all around. In the early AFL years, you saw a lot of walks and poor pitching as MLB teams were afraid to send their top pitchers. But we saw Mark Appel, Archie Bradley and Tyler Glasnow pitch last week and it doesn't get much better than that in the minors.

And some of the hitters just stood out as top prospects. I was most impressed by Yankees' RF Aaron Judge, who at 6'4" and 230 (or more) pounds stood out as the best player I've ever seen wearing an MLB uniform. He looks like Jimmy Graham in a baseball uniform. Okay, maybe he doesn't look as good as Bo Jackson did in an MLB uniform, but it has to be close. And he wowed the AFL Symposium crowd on Thursday with two HRs and one of the most impressive throws from deep RF to nail Dalton Pompey (who has plenty of speed) at home plate. Just an awesome arm. Baseball America ranks him as the No. 2 Yankees' prospect with 80 power.

But he wasn't alone. Dalton Pompey should start in CF or RF for the Blue Jays this year. Mark Appel had a rough outing, but he looks like an MLB pitcher on the mound and he will be in Houston at some point next year. Archie Bradley is ready right now. Greg Bird will be in the majors soon. Josh Bell could be at 1B to start the season as the Pirates have moved him from the outfield. I'll go into more detail on some of these guys later.

But it was great to see all of our NFBC guys at this conference. I knew that many of our regulars like Dave Potts, Todd Zola, Ken O'Brien, Roy Ericson, Perry Van Hook, Gene McCaffrey, John Menna, Brian Feldman, etc. would be there. But I was surprised by how many others at this conference played in our NFBC Draft Champions league last year. Many of them introduced themselves to me and said they got started with us in Arizona and really enjoyed that format. Once I looked up their names in the system, I realized that close to two dozen of the participants play in the NFBC in some fashion. It was pretty cool.

Good to see all of you in Phoenix and trust me, I'll be back next year. We ran two Draft Champions leagues out there, getting through 23 rounds in both leagues, and we'll finish the rest of those drafts online. The winner gets a free entry into the AFL Symposium next year. Pretty cool.

Oh, and I didn't want to forget about the ballparks out there. If you haven't been to that new Cubs' ballpark in Mesa, you MUST GO!! Wow, what a facility. What a complex. What a ballpark. Just beautiful. I still love Salt River Fields where the Fall Star Game was, but that Mesa facility is unreal. All of these new ballparks in Arizona are incredible and each complex seems to top the previous one. I have no idea who Florida can keep up with these improvements. Very impressive.

[Greg Ambrosius]

This is a good progress report by Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. Keep an eye on Greg Bird of the Yankees:

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/101244316 ... o-afl-play

[Greg Ambrosius]

Good to see that Houston's Mark Appel pitched well down the stretch in the AFL. He sure looks like an MLB-caliber pitcher and he has good stuff. In the game that we saw him, it was all about location, location, location with him. But I can see Appel making the majors this year and doing well.

Check out the latest here:

http://m.astros.mlb.com/news/article/10 ... ague-stint

[Greg Ambrosius]

Good writeup by Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com on the best skills in the Arizona Fall League:

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/101402060 ... all-league

[Greg Ambrosius]

Minnesota OF Eddie Rosario put on a show the entire AFL season and he saved his best for last in the AFL Championship Game. Could he earn a promotion to Minnesota this season? Don't count against it:

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-bas ... ague-title