Thanks again.

Hicks and Flores have tons of upside, but they are the furthest away from the majors, and Dee Gordon is strictly a SAGNOF type player at SS – like Elvis Andrus. You’ll just going to have to wait for the first two.

Strictly on upside:

Domonic Brown
Julio Teheran
Aaron Hicks
Mike Minor
Simon Castro
Wilmer Flores
Lonnie Chisenhall
Dee Gordon

Major League Readiness:
Domonic Brown (Future All-Star, just not 2011)
Mike Minor (Should contend for a Rotation spot in Spring Training)
Simon Castro (next year will get a chance)
Julio Teheran (Think this year’s Mike Minor)
Lonnie Chisenhall (Cleveland may be forced to play him sooner rather than later)
Dee Gordon (Defense needs to improve)
—-large drop (another two years minimum)—-
Aaron Hicks
Wilmer Flores

First of all, I thoroughly enjoy the posts.

I have a premature question to ask you. If you want, I can fire it off again in the offseason when all of the info is in, but I thought I’d ask for your input now.

We have 8-man minor league rosters. You can keep a guy on that roster, and after he crosses the rookie threshhold (50 IP, 130 AB) then you must promote or drop him the next year. You do not need to promote him as soon as he crosses it, so Mike Stanton is still on a minor league roster, for example. You promote a guy to your major league roster and you get him cheap for a year with an option to keep him for an additional 1-3 years at a middling salary. With someone like Stanton, you would have him for 2011-2014, and then he goes into the auction pool.

Anyhow, we might expand our league next year. For the minor league “expansion draft,” we can protect one “franchise” prospect. Then we rank our remaining 7 guys, and the new owner picks one guy from each tier, and no owner can lose more than one prospect.

Here’s my list. It’s a shallow league, so I place an emphasis on upside. A guy with the potential to be a “solid major leaguer” doesn’t have much value, so you might see some names I should scratch off the list.

Domonic Brown
Dee Gordon
Wilmer Flores
Mike Minor
Lonnie Chisenhall
Julio Teheran
Aaron Hicks
Simon Castro

Sorry for the long prelude. . . here’s my question. Should I consider promoting Brown and/or Minor if it looks like they’ll be starters next year, or should I wait and be able to keep them further into their careers? If I promoted both of them, I’d be able to protect more of my current prospect roster, but I would lose out on a year that should be closer to the prime of their careers. Any thoughts on the order of these prospects or whether I should throw any of them back?

Thanks. If you want to wait until the offseason, no problem.

On a side note: Who do you think takes over at 1B for the Cubbies if “Dreck” Lee is Braves bound? Anyone on the farm worthy of notice?