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Prospect List: #8

Yesterday Baseball America ranked Desmond Jennings as the top prospect in the SALLY League, today he falls just shy of the seventh ranking on our lists as the young phenom Jeremy "Hellboy" Hellickson overtook Desmond in the final hours.

The former ace of the U.S. national team, Hellickson has shown good poise for a youngster at his level. ‘Hellboy’ has a fastball of 91-95 with good movement; a plus 12-6 curveball that sits in the mid 70’s and has a decent changeup that should only grow with Hellickson. His small statue is the only concern, but the Rays have handled this with care, not rushing him to health and giving him a month in extended spring training to prevent him amassing too many innings in a given season. Did suffer a shoulder plate injury during junior year of high school, although has shown little signs of wear and tear.

I do have a personal announcement to make, but I don't feel it deserves its own post, therefore I posted it beyond the jump.

As you may remember when I posted the introduction concerning this list there was a renewed level of dedication factor to the project. To be honest I didn't expect to be writing this all of a week later, but funny things happen in life and most of the times change is for the best. I arrived here because of Jake's willingness to take a shot on an underdeveloped, to put it nicely, writer with an opinion on most everything and the ability to put together a coherent sentence, usually. Since I've learned a lot from everyone on this site, and along with being blessed with great opportunities I'm a product of my writing environment.

Now that I've gotten the sappy part of this out of the way perhaps I should actually get to the point. I'm now a part of the Beyond the Boxscore staff. No I'm not leaving, in fact for the large part my posting here at DRB should be unaffected, although as the Friday columnist over at BtB it's possible you could see a link every now and again to my new weekend home.

To answer the obvious in nice, non-time consuming bullet point fashion:

  • It's a sabremetrics based blog.
  • Quality > Quantity
  • Some of the brightest writers have came from BtB, namely Marc Normandin and the fabled Jeff Sackmann.
  • Obviously most of the content is non-Rays.
  • The logo is quite possibly the greatest thing ever, seriously:

Lastly I'd like to thank Jake and Patrick for their support amongst others, it's a pleasure working with two of the better staffs around.

Poll
Who's #8
  • Ryan Royster
  • Desmond Jennings
  • Heath Rollins
  • Christopher Mason
  • Mitch Talbot

  32 votes | Results

0 recs | Comment 10 comments

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Comments

Display:

Re: Prospect List: #8
Jennings. It waw between Hellickson and him on the last one for me so he gets it here. Mason and Talbot are both good pitchers, but Jennings has shown the tools to be a great OF and he is easier to project than they are.

Congrats RJ on the new post!!

http://tampabaysportsfanatic.blogspot.com/

by tampabaysportsfanatic on Oct 2, 2007 2:56 PM EDT   0 recs

Congrats RJ!
You young whippersnapper you.

by thebaddancingraysfan on Oct 2, 2007 3:24 PM EDT   0 recs

Thanks
And Desmond Jennings is running away with this thing.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 2, 2007 9:51 PM EDT   0 recs

Re: Thanks
I mean, Baby Face Mason will probably get #9... more then likely... Ferdy Perez is still damn good. He reminds me of the player Joey G wishes he were.

What a log jam at Center, aye?

by thebaddancingraysfan on Oct 2, 2007 9:56 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Re: Thanks
Gathy has done well for himself lately, I hope for his sake he continues; getting out of Tampa was the best thing that ever could've happened to him.

That being said Fernie is probably going to be better in the long run, and he doesn't jump cars for interesting back stories, he's just brilliant.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 2, 2007 10:03 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Re: Thanks
And a hell of a writer. I would buy his book...

by thebaddancingraysfan on Oct 3, 2007 12:01 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Congratulations R.J.
I look forward to reading your work over at BtB. You will do a great job if you put forth even half the effort you do here.

by Patrick L. Kennedy on Oct 2, 2007 10:14 PM EDT   0 recs

Thanks
My post on Friday is somewhat Rays' related; at least it was inspired by Kazmir and Shields.

And also I plan on bringing up RaysRule07's ProP proposition sometime in the near future.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 2, 2007 10:30 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Sweet
That would be awesome.

by raysrule07 on Oct 2, 2007 11:36 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

With the Beyond the Boxscore Logo...
It makes sense that "The Big Unit" plays pitcher... just saying...

by thebaddancingraysfan on Oct 3, 2007 12:03 PM EDT   0 recs

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