With the 5th Pick of the 2008 Draft: Top College Players as of 05/10/08

There is a great website run by a top prospect expert, John Sickels, who used to work for Bill James and then ESPN, but now runs his own family business selling his annual prospect book, and he recently went over the top hitters and pitchers in college recently: hitters here and pitchers here, and even more hitters here.

As he notes in the hitter's post, his ranking is probably a bit controversial because he jumped up two hitters above some of the prospects that were considered the best only a few months ago. But that happens every year, like the year we picked Tim Lincecum, early on Baseball America had Evan Longoria pegged as the 10th best player but he outperformed and moved upward, out of our reach. Lincecum's risk factors - size, unorthodox throwing motion, unorthodox training methods - made him fall from #1 consideration (reportedly the Royals were considering him among others) into our laps.

Interesting enough, the concensus top hitters have been all basically firstbasemen, including 3B Pedro Alvarez, who according to recent reports might not last at 3B in the pros and end up a firstbaseman, but now Sickels have bumped up two hitters from key defensive positions that will shake things up if other draft experts agree.

As any Giants fan would want a position player picked and not a pitcher, I am not going to go over the pitchers here, you can read about them in the link above if you wish. Here are the top 5 hitters that he listed:

1. Pedro Alvarez, 3B, Vanderbilt: despite a poor performance this year thus far, people are giving him a break based on his past performances. However, he's still a Boras client and might fall due to that.

2. Buster Posey, C, Florida: sounds more like a musician or actor, but he plays in the toughest position in baseball, behind the plate. He has adequate defense to go with his much improved hitting this season.

3. Gordon Beckham, SS, Georgia: he has power, speed, plate discipline, and can play SS. What more can you ask for?

4. Justin Smoak, 1B, South Carolina: he has been the consensus pick that the Giants will pick, but the problem is that around the same time, Angel Villalona suddenly became the consensus pick to be the firstbaseman of the future for the Giants, and looking at the photos I've seen, Angel ain't playing in the outfield, firstbase will be his home unless he discovers Jenny Craig and lose the baby fat as Felipe Alou had intimated when he talked about him. Smoak is a great hitter though, so we could be having another McCovey/Cepeda dilemma again if we select him. Still, better to have this type of problem than the problem we've been facing at SS once Vizquel was DLed.

5. Yonder Alonso, 1B, Miami: as been tagged just behind Smoak in most rankings I've seen, a bit less power and other stuff. We are probably not considering him unless the four guys above are picked before us, leaving us Alonso, the college pitchers, and the high school hitters.

One scenario I've seen is that there are comparable firstbasemen available around our supplemental pick we got for Feliz (I think it was 37th or 39th) so we might pass on firstbase and pick another player (at that time a pitcher) but with these two other position players moving up in stature, the odds favor picking one of them if they are available, then picking someone like Allan Dystra with the Feliz pick.