Orange County Register

At 5 feet, 8 inches — or a couple inches shorter, depending on the report — Alexia Amarista is going to have a hard time getting noticed by scouts and prospect hounds, unless he does something special. How about the fourth-best statistical performance by an Angels prospect since 2005?

According to Halos Heaven’s rghan, the 20-year-old Amarista did just that, winning his league’s batting title and his league’s equivalent of the Gold Glove at low-A Cedar Rapids this season. And in rghan’s annual ranking of minor league performances, Amarista tops the list.

These are much different than prospect rankings. For ranking purposes, rghan doesn’t get into the scouting reports, body types or pedigrees, but simply rates the performance in the context of each minor league level.  (He does talk about those things in each player’s write-up, so do click through.)

Here’s No. 32-21, No. 20-11, and his top 10:

10. Michael Kohn, RH RP, low-A
9. Dillon Baird, 1B, rookie ball
8. Robert Mosebach, RH RP, AA and AAA
7. Peter Bourjos, CF, AA
6. Trevor Bell, RHP, Double- and AAA
5. Trevor Reckling, LHP, High-A and AA
4. Alexander Torres, LHP, High-A and AA*
3. Sean Rodriguez, utility, AAA*
2. Carlos Ramirez, C, rookie ball
1. Amarista

Other notables: Brandon Wood at No. 14, 17-year-old Mike Trout at No. 15, and top pick Randal Grichuk at No. 32.  Again, these are not prospect ratings. Ramirez, for instance, has all of 200 professional at bats, he was 21 years old playing short-season ball, and he mashed in a hitters league. Don’t expect anybody to rank him ahead of Reckling or Trout this winter. Generally speaking, the lower the level, the less predictive the raw stats are.

Here’s last year’s list, too.

*Torres and Rodriguez were both traded away in the Scott Kazmir deal.

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