Our minor league coverage is second to none, thanks to John Sickels, who runs Minor League Ball. John has been running quite a few interviews lately and his latest is with Mike Hazen, the Red Sox Vice President of Player Development. I found this part to be especially interesting considering what the Sox gave up to get Adrian Gonzalez:
SICKELS: Let's talk about some specific players. The Adrian Gonzalez trade cost you Casey Kelly, Reymond Fuentes, and Anthony Rizzo, three of your best prospects. Who do you see as your top prospect now? HAZEN: Tough question as we don't really look at the system in that way. We feel any number of players could emerge as the top tier of the system players. There are those players that have significant upside that still have a longer road to go either from an experience standpoint or developmentally based such as Britton, Iglesias, Tejeda, Middlebrooks, Lavarnway, those in the 2010 draft class. And then comparatively you have players that have more polish to their game that people don't view with the same upside for some reason yet have competed well at the upper levels like Kalish, Doubront, Navarro that could factor onto our major league club immediately. We feel strongly that any of these guys along with others have a chance to solidify themselves as the top players in our system and hopefully some will graduate to our club in the next few seasons.