Orange County Register

With the Arizona Fall League wrapping up play this week, the handful of Angels’ prospects who spent time in the league were fairly unimpressive.

Cubs prospect Josh Vitters (drafted third overall in the 2007 draft out of Cypress High) tore it up for the Mesa Solar Sox, finishing with one of the highest batting averages in the league (.353). But his Solar Sox teammate and fellow OC product, Hank Conger, did not do as well.

Conger (the Angels’ first-round pick in 2006) hit just .211 (12 for 57) in 15 games for the Solar Sox and then was shut down last week by the Angels as a “precautionary” measure. According to Angels GM Tony Reagins, the Angels were concerned about possible fatigue for Conger.

After being sidetracked by injuries each of the previous two seasons, Conger played 123 games (87 at catcher, 36 at DH) at Double-A Arkansas this year — by far a career-high for him. Conger hit .295 with 11 home runs and 68 RBI.

Reagins said the short AFL stint had nothing to do with any recurrence of the shoulder problems that limited Conger last season, just a concern about pushing Conger too far this year.

The Angels also had a pair of infielders (Ryan Mount and P.J. Phillips) and four pitchers see action in the AFL.

Phillips was the most successful of the Angels’  farmhands. He hit .281 (18 for 64) with 11 runs scored and five stolen bases in 18 games. Mount hit just .208 (11 for 53) in 15 games. Both were second-round picks of the Angels in 2005.

Among the pitchers, right-hander Tommy Mendoza was the most effective. A fifth-rounder in 2005, Mendoza was 2-1 with a 5.21 ERA in six games (five starts) for Mesa. But he did have an impressive walk ratio (just three in 18 innings pitched).

The other Angels pitchers were Marco Albano (0-0, 8.16 ERA in 11 relief appearances), Jeremy Haynes (0-1, 9.69 in 10 relief appearances) and Tim Kiely (0-0, 8.31 ERA in 10 games, two starts).

Meanwhile in Venezuela, the Angels’ diminutive hitting machine, infielder Alexi Amarista, has picked up right where he left off.

Amarista, 20, won the Class-A Midwest League batting title this season by hitting .319 for Cedar Rapids (actually the lowest average in Amarista’s three professional seasons). Playing winter ball in his native Venezuela, Amarista is batting .372 (29 for 78) with four doubles, six triples and two home runs in his first 19 games for Caribes de Anzoategui.

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.

The Angels did a remarkable job signing all their draft picks by Monday, with the one exception of Arizona State lefty Josh Spence, who will return for his senior season.

Spence, a finesse pitcher from Australia, was holding out for money beyond that slotted for a No. 48 overall pick. The Angels called his bluff and now we’ll see where he goes next June. The funny thing is Angels scouting director Eddie Bane is a former Sun Devil.