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I'll probably make a couple more announcements before eventually deleting the blog. So subscribers better act fast!!

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Mid-Level to Top-10 - Who Makes the Jump?

Continuing our 2008 prospect preview series, today we focus on the mid-level prospects that I think stand an excellent chance to make the leap into their respective organization's top-10 prospects.

So we have no confusion, I am defining a mid-level prospect as a player who falls mostly into the 10 - 20 range of a team's top prospect list and who grade out to around a C+/B- on the prospect grade scale. For the players in this article, I am not predicting they will develop into one of the top 3 or 4 prospects in their respective organization (though a few could), but they will catapult themselves into the 5 - 9 range of a team's top prospect list.

With that said, lets get started.

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What Happened to Jason Bay?

One of the big mysteries of the 2007 season was the decline of Pirates' OF Jason Bay. The question everybody has is how it happened.

Was it injuries? Bay did battle knee discomfort for much of the 2007 season and was coming off arthroscopic knee surgery from the previous offseason. However, Bay has said his knee only bothered him when playing the field and had no effect on his season. Did he just have a down year? Another possibility. Perhaps he has just begun his decline as players with his skill set seem to decline at a faster and earlier rate.

Lets begin with his numbers from the last two seasons:

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The Powerful Hip Rotation of Prince Fielder...

This article is made in conjunction with the piece about a hitter's toe touch and foot plant. The importance of toe touch and foot plant relates to a hitter's timing and efficiency in their hip rotation.

Mechanics for both pitchers and hitters are interesting in how such subtle changes to a player's mechanics can drastically change the results a player is getting. Everything needs to be in sync and needs to be a natural act...mechanics need to come instinctively without thinking. The toe touch and foot plant should be in sync with one of the major sources of a hitter's power: the hip rotation. Frame-by-frame, lets see how Prince Fielder does it:

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Hitting Mechanics: Foot Plant and Toe Touch

Toe Touch is defined as the first point in which the batter's foot touches the ground. The exact point of toe touch (and foot plant for that matter) can be difficult to pick up, but you should have a general idea of where toe touch first occurs. Below is a clip of Derrick Lee's toe touch which precedes his foot plant:

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The Most Underrated Prospects In All of Baseball

Over the next month or so, I will be unveiling the 2008 Prospect Preview Series (likely ending with the season already underway, but that's ok). We begin our 2008 Prospect Preview Series by looking at the most underrated prospects in all of baseball...

To see a full breakdown of Henry Sosa (Giants), Jed Lowrie (Red Sox), Chase Headley (Padres), Jair Jurrjens (Braves), Austin Jackson (Yankees), and Chris Tillman (Orioles), please click here

A Tale of Two Arm Actions...

Lets talk arm action. No, the comparison between Roy Oswalt and Jeff Manship isn't really fair. Roy Oswalt is one of the best pitchers in the game, while Jeff Manship is a pretty good pitching prospect in the Twins organization. But one of them has excellent arm action. The other has some work to do.

As you look at Roy Oswalt below, I want you to focus on the mid-way point through his arm circle. This is where the elbow should be picking up the ball as the arm is loaded horizontally (meaning toward first base, not second). Here is how Roy Oswalt does it:

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Scouting the Unknown - Fautino de los Santos

As Fautino de los Santos continued to put up fantastic numbers, slowly but surely his name recogntion grew. However, for much of 2007, de los Santos was an unknown outside of the Chicago White Sox organization. Here is a pitching prospect with excellent numbers to go along with excellent stuff, and nobody had a clue as to who this guy was entering the year. This isn't the case anymore, as de los Santos has popped up on almost every top prospect list released over the offseason and also found himself in the middle of a blockbuster deal to the Oakland Athletics for Nick Swisher.

The reason de los Santos was an unknown commodity was because this was his first year in the United States. The 21 year old pitcher came over from the Dominican Republican and quickly began blowing away hitters at low-A Kannapolis in the Sally League. I want to examine de los Santos' mechanics, stuff, and numbers to get an idea of what we should expect out of him in the future.

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Matt Kemp's Tremendous Bat Speed

Dodger's right fielder Matt Kemp is among the premier young players in the game and just oozes talent and potential.

I want to highlight one thing Matt Kemp does exceptionally well. Kemp does what is called letting the ball travel deep into his hitting zone. He waits until the last possible moment to commit to a pitch. The beneftis?

Click the link to see a visual of Kemp's bat speed...

Welcome to Baseball Intellect

Let me first say welcome to what I hope will be many readers. In this article, I am going to basically explain what this site is all about. But before I do, I would like to point out that this blog will serve as a gateway to the full article. The blog allows readers to be notified of site updates using an RSS feed, allows readers to make comments and interact in the Baseball-Intellect community, also serves as an archive system that is much more comprehensive than the one at the original site. The blog will also be an area for readers to make comments Moving on...

Baseball-Intellect is a site that combines sabermetric analysis and player scouting into one. Both the major and minor leagues will be covered, but there will be a special emphasis on minor league prospects and the reason is because much of what I will be writing about deals with helping fans actually see players that they either haven't seen before or haven't seen very much of.

Rarely do you hear a fan discuss a team's best prospects on a seen-them-play basis. Usually, we rehash scouting reports, which are sometimes vague, from various publications, looking for every scrap of information we can find. I'm looking to change that...

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