Baseball America Ranks Dodgers Prospects

This is a two-part post, so pay attention.

First, Baseball America listed the top prospects in the Dodgers' organization. Given the prospects we traded last year to get players like Julio Lugo, Mark Hendrickson, and Danys Baez (to be fair, we also got Marlon Anderson and Wilson "Jury's Still Out" Betemit), as well as the fact that we've graduated Russell Martin, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Jonathan Broxton, Takashi Saito, Chad Billingsley, and Hong-Chih Kuo, one would think that we don't have anything left in the system. On the contrary, though, we still have some great prospects in the fold. Behold Baseball America's top 10 Dodgers prospects:

1. Andy LaRoche, 3b
2. Clayton Kershaw, lhp
3. Scott Elbert, lhp
4. James Loney, 1b/of
5. Etanislao Abreu, 2b
6. Ivan DeJesus Jr., ss
7. Jonathan Meloan, rhp
8. Blake DeWitt, 2b/3b
9. Josh Bell, 3b
10. Preston Mattingly, ss

I don't fully understand why Loney is on here but Kemp isn't, but whatever.

Okay, so then comes part 2: today, Jim Callis of Baseball America chatted on ESPN about a number of topics, including the Dodgers prospects. Callis thinks [Kershaw > Elbert] and [Kemp > Ethier]. That's the good news. The bad news is, elsewhere in the chat, he espouses that [Tim Linecum (SF) > Kershaw] and [Chris Young (AZ) > Kemp].

Those of you using the transitive property can figure out that Callis believes other NL West clubs have players which could be better than either top Dodger prospect. Those of you using the associative property may have ended up with [Chris (Young) AZ > Kemp], which is technically correct though more confusing nomenclature to read.

In the chat, Callis also goes on to say that the Dodgers are "making a mistake for blocking Kemp and Loney." Other quips from Callis included Pedro > Koufax; Preston Mattingly = ask again later; and, in the Pie category, Pecan > Felix > Rhubarb (seriously).