Cincinnati Reds links - Pitching prospects crack Top 10 lists

Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo are in the midst of releasing their Top 10 prospects by position lists, and so far the Cincinnati Reds have been quite well represented.  Callis opened the series on Tuesday with the Top 10 right-handed pitching prospects, and Robert Stephenson checked in at #7.  Then, on Wednesday, Mayo dropped the Top 10 left-handed pitching prospects list, and both Cody Reed (#7) and Amir Garrett (#9) made appearances, too.  It's likely that each of those three will find their names on various, if not all Top 100 overall lists prior to the 2016 season, and it's a healthy endorsement of the youthful arms the Reds have put together so early in this rebuilding process.  Add-in that Anthony DeSclafani, Raisel Iglesias, Michael Lorenzen, John Lamb, and Brandon Finnegan aren't in consideration for these rankings (due to service time or international signings), and there's a lot to like about the future of the Reds hurlers going forward.

The full article version of their Top 10 catching prospects list is also due out at some point this (Thursday) afternoon, at which point you'll find Reds farmhand Tyler Stephenson ranked as the #2 catching prospect in all of baseball.  It seems the Reds, who took Stephenson in the 1st round of the 2015 MLB Draft, aren't the only ones who think he's got a world of potential.

That brings us to Baseball Prospectus, who released their annual excellent summation of the Reds system Thursday morning.  Chris Crawford & Co. don't reinvent the wheel in their analysis of the best and brightest future Reds, but they do have great insight into the upside potential of each of the fresh faces on the farm.  They, too, are quite high on both Stephensons, Reed, and Garrett, and it's also interesting to note that they - like the Red Reporter Community Prospect Rankings - don't have Jose Peraza as the clear cut top prospect in the organization at the moment.  Granted, BP usually weighs overall ceiling over proximity to the majors when making their rankings (unlike MLB Pipeline, generally), but it's one major scouting service that doesn't appear to be as sold on Peraza as the Reds' front office was when doing everything possible to obtain him.  A great read on a system that's once again flush with talent after a few lean years.

Speaking of Peraza, MLB.com's Mark Sheldon caught up with Reds GM Dick Williams to discuss how and where Peraza will fit on the 2016 Reds.  The verdict:  there is no verdict, of yet.

Our friends over at Redleg Nation took a line by line look at Billy Hamilton, in the process making a case for sticking with the talented yet flawed CF while his game continues to mature.

Yesterday, I kicked around the hypothetical idea of the Reds flipping some of those vaunted pitching prospects to the Colorado Rockies for, say, Corey Dickerson.  That drew a spotlight onto his tremendous home/road splits - and rightly so - and that brought back to mind this article from MLB.com's Mike Petriello from December that takes aim at what exactly the 'Coors Field Effect' really is.

Finally, FanGraphs' Scott Spratt attempted to tackle what the Reds' playing time allocations will look like from a fantasy perspective in 2016, and even if you're not a Roto player, it's a decent look at one way the innings might shake out given what we know at the moment (which, of course, is not much at all).