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The Oakland Telegraph
11 April 2032
Oakland's Vasquez and Lee feature in BNN's Top 10 Prospects list; 10 A's youngsters in the top 100
By Hugh Knows, speculative guesswork correspondent
Another April, another wild stab in the dark by the Baseball News Network about which promising young players will develop into bona fide stars of the game. The A's will be hoping there is more method to BNN's madness than just purely guessing, as yet again they featured heavily in the top prospects list.
21-year-old lefty starting pitching Anastasio Vasquez featured at #3, up from #10 last year. Beane will surely be looking to promote the starlet onto the active roster later on in the season, particularly if any of his current rotation falters in their performance. Replacing Vasquez in the #10 slot this time round is bullet-throwing reliever Brandon Lee. The 19-year-old, drafted last year, needs to control his control, so to speak, before he's ready for the majors, but he has talent oozing out of his ears and looks set to be a fixture in the A's bullpen for many years.
Oakland GM Paulie Beane was annoyingly smug a few months ago when he fleeced the Arizona Diamondbacks to acquire last year's #1 prospect, third baseman Tony De Jesus. But he was left looking rather less pleased with himself when BNN announced that this year they had relegated De Jesus down to #24. Player development is a fickle mistress.
The future of Oakland's pitching again looks good, because, in addition to Vasquez and Lee, also featuring highly are Joe Byrd (#12), Mario Plourde (#14) and Esteban Mendez (#39). Shortstop Harvey Turner appears at #29 and centre fielder Jean-Francois Pelletier at #71. In total the A's had ten prospects in BNN's top 100, with catchers Tewfik Fogo (#60) and Chun-mei Leong (#79) also popular with analyst Mya Crowsoft-Word-Rosoft-Excel, who recently wed A's sabermetrician Mike Rosoft-Excel and is apparently unaware that concatenating your surnames isn't compulsory when you get married.
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