Minor League Baseball League Top 10 Prospects: Southern League
With the minor league baseball season over, it’s list season, and we’ll continue the league top 10 lists with the Southern League
Minor league baseball has concluded its regular season and playoffs at this point in the most part, so we will be starting our series of league top 10 prospects here at Call To The Pen. This series will be keyed by Benjamin Chase through extensive video research and discussion with scouts and those within the game. Certainly, there are other opinions on these players and the order, but this is his list. Each list will start with a review of the season for that league and some of the leaders in each league. One note: to be eligible to be on this list, a player must have qualified for the league stat leaders (2.7 PA/league G for hitters, 0.8 IP/league game for pitchers) in order to be considered.
Season Wrap
The Southern League is one of the most geographically diverse leagues on the eastern half of the country, with teams in Tennessee to Gulf Coast states. With the force of Hurricane Irma bearing down on the Florida-based teams, two of which were in the playoffs, the Southern League chose to finish their championship with co-champions. Pensacola opened the season with a rotation that mostly ended up in Cincinnati pitching for the major league club, and they were tough to beat in the first half, but seemingly limped to the finish. A strong showing from two of their starters helped to propel them to one side of the championship. On the other side, the Chattanooga Lookouts were the best regular season in the Southern League by 15 games, winning 91 on the regular season. They ended up squaring off with the team who finished second in total record behind them from Montgomery, and the result was a well-played 5-game series, won on a walk-off 2-run home run by Chattanooga for their half of the title.
Some of the league leaders:
AVG – Braxton Lee, Jacksonville, .309
OBP – Jonathan Rodriguez, Chattanooga, .414
SLG – Jonathan Rodriguez, Chattanooga, .525
HR – Kevin Cron, Jackson, 25
SB – Johnny Davis, Biloxi, 52
W – Three with 13
SV – Matt Ramsey, Biloxi, 27
K – Deck McGuire, Pensacola, 170
ERA – Grayson Long, Mobile, 2.52
WHIP – Aaron Wilkerson, Biloxi, 1.07
Now to the top 10…