Rock Master Scott from Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three, famous for the song, The Roof is on Fire, was vacationing with his family in Pompeii, Italy in the early 1980s, when he saw the ruins in the volcanic ash. He passed his Minolta camera to his grandma, so it wouldn’t bang into anything, and laid on the ground, mimicking a victim from 79 AD. Then, he started screaming the chorus to his now famous song, only since his family was there, he screamed, “Let the motherfudger burn. Burn, motherfudger, burn.” This is a little known fact, similar to the little known rookie prospect, Dalton Pompey. He was barely inside the top 20 for Jays prospects coming into this year. Some people ranked Kevin Pillar above him. The same Kevin Pillar who is followed on Twitter by the Sons of Pam Porn for his conversations with Jason Paritek and Curt Pilling. The same Pillar who is a platoon outfielder at best. The problem with the rankings of others is they are ranking for real baseball value. A center fielder like Pompey, who can hit .250 and steal 30 bases, doesn’t exactly fly the pants flag when it comes to real world prospects. To illustrate, let’s go into the Fantasy Time Machine. In 2007, the Giants received a marginal prospect from the Pirates. A hitter that was ranked the 27th best prospect on the Pirates at the time, in a system that was awful. Baseball Prospectus said at the time, “The Giants didn’t trade much and got less in return with Rajai.” Another article called Rajai, “a non-prospect.” A third article says, “Rajai Davis, the main player the Giants acquired in the deal, presents low upside.” All Rajai had was speed. Rajai hasn’t stolen less than 34 bases in any year since 2009 and has three years above 40 steals while also being crowned The King of SAGNOF. Last year alone, Rajai was the 35th ranked outfielder in fantasy. A) No one knows anything about what a player will do. They’re all guessing. B) The one thing you can count on translating from the minor leagues to the majors is speed. C) There’s no C. Anyway, what can we expect of Dalton Pompey for 2015 fantasy baseball?
SAGNOF, dur. I’m not saying Pompey is anything that special. He’s fast. He seems like the kind of guy that a team could bat 9th for 400 ABs and watch him collect 35 steals and be the 2nd table setter. What the fork?! That’s what irritable table setters say. The Jays have a spot for him too. Gose has already left, Melky is exploring website design jobs with other teams and Colby Rasmus is headed off to try his post-post-post-post-POST-post-prospect status elsewhere (maybe him and Logan Morrison can get together and hashtag things). Center field for the Jays will be filled with a free agent acquisition this offseason, Pillar in a platoon with Pompey or just Pompey. Some have mentioned Pompey could have the inside track since he’s Canadian. I, honestly, can’t tell if those people are joking or how that matters. Pompey’s campaigning to run down balls in the outfield, not to run for office. Besides, he doesn’t smoke enough crack for public office in Toronto. Pompey could have the inside track because he plays solid defense. Pompey may be bumped out for someone else because he’s very young (21) and didn’t impress in September like he could’ve. For now, I’m gonna give him the projections of 42/3/28/.253/22 in 350 ABs, which is useless outside of AL-Only leagues, but I’ll be watching him like a cyclops with a monocle to see if he gets the starting job because he could easily be a 5-HR, 30-plus steals player.
