Minor Notes: Minor league baseball season cancelled

Here are Wednesday's minor league notes:

• After getting Jim Callis' immediate thoughts on the Red Sox draft, the SoxPrsopects podcast team of Chris Hatfield and Ian Cundall did their own recap of the draft as well as the undrafted free agent signing period thus far. Unexpectedly, much of the discussion was spent on the two highly rated high school bats, Blaze Jordan and Nick Yorke, who the podcast team feels will need to be carried by their bats.

• On Tuesday, SoxProspects.com kicked off a new project that aims to look back at the successes and failures of Red Sox drafts past. The draft retrospective project kicked off by looking at the 2003 MLB Draft, which was Theo Epstein's first draft in charge and saw the team select the likes of Jonathan Papelbon, David Murphy, and current manager of the Lowell Spinners, Iggy Suarez. 

• While the influx of undrafted free agent signings has slowed this week, the Red Sox announced the addition of Puerto Rico natives Juan Montero and Henry Nunez as well as University of Alabama reliever Casey Cobb. Montero is a catcher from the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy (which also produced Christian Vasquez) with an average frame and some pop in his bat. Nunez is a projectable but raw right-hander hailing from the Centro Especializado De Educacion Avanzada Cedea, while in 2020 Cobb allowed just one earned run in 12 1/3 innings as a stalwart of the University of Alabama bullpen. 

• With the proposed restart of the MLB season scheduled to get underway on July 23, the Red Sox announced the initial 47 members of their 60-man player pool. The only prospects included on the initial list were Bobby Dalbec, CJ Chatham, Connor Wong, and Jonathan Arauz, all of whom were already on the 40-man roster, with the exception of Wong. This does not preclude the addition of any prospects, and Christopher Smith of MassLive.com believes the team will likely fill the remaining spots with a combination of highly-rated prospects such as Triston Casas and Bryan Mata as well as minor league depth pieces such as Josh Ockimey and  Jantzen Witte. 

• Following the league-wide announcement of each team's initial player pools, Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs analyzed the prospects included in each division. Longenhagen was unexpectedly low on the Red Sox group considering their lack of prospects, but considered Bobby Dalbec and Jonathan Arauz the most likely rookies to make an impact while giving Connor Wong an outside chance to get some time behind the dish.

• As part of a series ranking the teams with the best prospects by position group, Mike Rosenbaum of MLB.com ranked the Red Sox as the system with the eighth-best middle infielders in the league. This group was unsurprisingly highlighted by recent addition Jeter Downs who was joined by Matthew Lugo, CJ Chatham, Brainer Bonaci, and Cameron Cannon, all of whom are included in MLB.com's Top 30 Red Sox prospects. 

• A few days prior, Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com ranked the Red Sox corner infielders as the ninth-best group in the game. Triston Casas of course led that group, with Bobby Dalbec and the recently drafted Blaze Jordan also garnering mention.

• After weeks of speculation surrounding the future of the baseball season, it comes as no surprise that the Minor League Baseball season was officially canceled on Tuesday. Despite this SoxProspects.com's coverage will continue as it has during the suspension of play. Be sure to check the SoxProspects news page as well as follow us on twitter (@SoxProspects) for all content and updates related to the Red Sox farm system.

Photo credit: Bobby Dalbec by Kelly O'Connor

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