Hi everyone. Continuing our prospect countdown here's the last installment of the first half of the prospect countdown. Most recently, Tom took on #31-35. Woodman was stellar as usual with #36-40. Yours truly tacked #41-45. And Tom got things started with #46-50.

30. Dickie Thon, Jr., SS: I had Thon ranked slightly lower than Tom and Woodman but am still a big fan. The son of major-league infielder Dickie Thon, our version was drafted in the 5th round in 2010 out of his Puerto Rican high school and was signed after a small amount of drama as to whether or not he would sign with the Jays or honor his commitment to his hometown Rice University. Thon is 20 now and didn't come to professional baseball with the pedigree one might expect from the son of a long-time major leaguer. That said, Thon's tools are regarded highly and some scouts project him as having starting shortstop potential. Thon's defense is reasonably well-regarded and he has a strong arm, though he is not a flashy shortstop. I'd expect a fair number of errors in the lower minors as he continues to work on his release points and footwork, but the talent appears to be there. At the plate, Thon shows a good line drive swing and decent power potential, but needs to work quite a bit on recognizing pitches. The young shortstop's green showed in rookie ball, where he hit just .223/.369/.322, but he showed a nice approach and respectable power for a 19-year old. You have to like a shortstop prospect with the glove to stick at the position and good potential as a hitter, but Thon also has quite a while to go.

29. Chad Jenkins, RHP: I ranked Jenkins a bit higher than this, but I can't at all disagree with where he ended up. Jenkins was drafted 20th overall in the first round of the 2009 draft out of Kennesaw State University, which isn't as great a baseball school as you would think given the name. Jenkins didn't pitch until 2010, which he split across Lansing and Dunedin and pitched well, if unspectacularly. 2011 saw Jenkins progress to New Hampshire, where he pitched most of the season and had another perfectly capable season. One could imagine Jenkins having a decent major-league career -- However, with the number of high-ceiling Jays prospects who have entered the system since 2009, Jenkins just isn't a guy to salivate over. He hasn't put up big strikeout numbers in the minors but he has limited the walks. What Jenkins has really excelled at, though, is keeping the ball down. The big righty has a heavy sinker and used it to great effect, both in inducing groundballs and keeping the ball in the park (essentially two sides of the same skill coin). If Jenkins can't succeed as a starter, you could see his heavy sinker (which sits in the low 90s) being a formidable weapon against righties as a right-handed reliever in the Casey Janssen mold. That said, Jenkins also throughs a mid-90s fastball and a quality slider. Continuing to develop his changeup as a weapon against lefties and to generate swinging strikes is a big key for Jenkins this season, and it'll be something for him to work on as he likely begins his season in New Hampshire but by no means needs to stay there. At 24, he could make the majors as soon as this season.

28. John Stilson, RHP: Stilson, a big Texan righty, was drafted out of high school by the MInnesota Twins in the 19th round, but chose to attend the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (better known as Texas A & M). The Twins loss was the Aggies' and the Jays' gain, as the Blue Jays snapped up Stilson in the 3rd round of last year's draft. Stilson's stuff is extremely highly regarded and he would've likely been a first-round pick, but injury concerns caused him to slip down to the third round. A & M has had issues with their use of young pitchers and it may be that Stilson was a casualty. Specifically, Stilson was diagnosed with a tear in his labrum, always a dangerous injury for a pitcher. Consultations with Dr. James Andrews suggested, however, that Stilson could avoid surgery with a successful rehab. Stilson was known for three pitches: a fastball that sits in the high 90s and routinely hit 99, a plus changeup that serves as a weapon against both righties and lefties, and a hard slider with tons of movement. The Jays should at least try Stilson out as a starter and see how that goes, but if he has trouble staying healthy the advice given to Dustin McGowan, who suffered a similar injury, might come into play with Stilson - that regular but one- or two-inning work out of the pen would be easier on his arm than throwing 100+ pitches every five days. We'll just have to see, but in the meantime it's hard not to get excited about Stilson. When your fallback option is a shutdown closer, that's not a bad thing.

27. David Cooper, 1B: Cooper, a first-round pick back in 2008, was drafted out of UC Berkeley. David had an up-and-down career in the minors but improved greatly in the second half of 2010 and seemed to break out in 2011 with a monster year taking advantage of hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League (.364/.439/.535). Cooper was called up at the end of April and spent about two weeks with the team, not really enough time to judge much of anything. He returned to the minors where he continued to hit until he earned a September callup. Coop's (yes, I'm a Twin Peaks fan), September numbers were solid - .289/.325/.526, though he did benefit from a .357 BABIP (I guess he felt lucky, punk - wow, these are just writing themselves). Cooper doesn't seem like a future star, but he does have potential as a hitter as he enters his age 25 season. He is limited defensively so it'll be interesting to see how the lefty is used by the Jays in 2012.

26. Roberto Osuna, RHP: The 16-year old nephew of former major-league reliever Antonio Osuna was a bit of a coup for the Jays. Osuna actually managed the impressive feat of pitching successfully in the Mexican League at age 15. The Mexican league is generally regarded as being closer for pitchers to the high-minors than the low-minors, populated with former major-leaguers and hitter-friendly due to high elevation of most of the stadia. Osuna is only 16 but it's already clear that he is built much like his uncle - stocky and strong. Osuna can already hit 94 with his fastball and at 16 with inconsistent mechanics there's room to improve on that. It goes without saying that Osuna has a long way to go, but he already has an impressive resume and plenty of time to refine his mechanics. If he can continue to progress and mind his conditioning, the sky will be the limit for the young hurler.

Well, there you go. Two perfectly competent high-minors types close to the majors, and three young guys to get very excited over.

See you soon with our first foray into the top 25!

I've asked the other AL East bloggers to write us up a preview of their team for 2012, let us know their team's additions and subtractions as well as a feeling for how their team will do this year.

We heard from the Yankees yesterday. Today Stacey from Camden Chat has been nice enough to stop by to tell us of the Orioles off-season:

Greetings, Blue Jays fans. I come to you in peace, one beaten down Orioles fan, to offer you hope that in your team's continued efforts to rise in the American League East, that they will once again not be hindered by the Orioles.

If you're familiar with The Dugout and their often hilarious portrayals of "Major League Baseball's Official Chat Room," there was one post in which a just-promoted-to-the-big-leagues Matt Wieters proclaimed, "I shall lead these Peoples to the promised land, also known as slightly ahead of the Blue Jays." Well, that obviously hasn't happened, and I wouldn't put money on it happening any time soon.

In August 2007, Andy MacPhail was hired to turn the sad, sad Baltimore Orioles around. He made a few good trades and tried to say all of the right things, but ultimately failed, leaving town this winter. Then began the circus that was finding his replacement. Some assistant GMs chose to stay with their current, less pathetic teams, others removed their names from consideration, and the Orioles ended up with Dan Duquette, a man who has been out of baseball for a decade.

Duquette's strategy this off-season has been...boring. He's done a decent job in building depth on the team, but he really hasn't done anything that would make them better. After the disappointing performance from the young starting pitchers the past few seasons, Duquette went for reinforcements. He signed Wey-Yin Chen and Tsuyoshi Wada as free agents out of the NPB. He traded some minor leaguers for Dana Eveland, and in what is really the only big move of the off-season, he traded staff veteran Jeremy Guthrie to the Colorado Rockies for Matt Lindstrom and Jason Hammel.

So what does that mean? Going into Spring Training Chen, Wada, Eveland, and Hammel will be competing for rotations spots with the underachieving Jake Arrieta, possibly injured Zach Britton, hot mess Brian Matusz, AAAA All-Star Chris Tillman, and, to a lesser extent, destined-for-the-bullpen guys Brad Bergesen and Alfredo Simon. Chen and Hammel are pretty much locks to make the rotation, leaving the disgraced youngsters and mediocre veterans to duke it out for the three remaining spots while the Orioles cross their fingers that at least one will be surprise us all.

As for the offense, it won't look too different than last year. Nolan Reimold will hopefully get a chance to play every day in left field while Adam Jones and Nick Markakis return to their places in center and right, respectively. Markakis had off-season surgery on his abdomen and while he claims he'll be ready for Opening Day, a delay in his recovery could move Reimold to right field and new backup Endy Chavez to left.

The reanimated corpse of Vladimir Guerrero has been replaced at designated hitter by Wilson Betemit, which can only be an improvement. The infield will remain the basically the same with Mark Reynolds, J.J. Hardy, Robert Andino, and Chris Davis around the horn. Everyone is hoping for a miracle that will see the concussed Brian Roberts ready to start the season, but considering he couldn't even attend FanFest a few weeks ago because of his sensitivity to light and sound, it's not looking good for the fan favorite. I will personally be surprised if Roberts starts another game as an Oriole. Truly a sad end to a good career.

Matt Wieters, the one player I'm really looking forward to seeing, will of course be the catcher and will continue to make me happy with his generally bad-assery behind the plate.

The bottom line is that the 2012 Orioles will probably not be much better than the 2011 Orioles. Dan Duquette made some moves that make sense on their own (Chavez gives the O's depth on the bench, Betemit is great against righties, etc.) but he did nothing to really improve the club to a position where they could climb out of the AL East cellar or post a winning season.

Single game tickets went on sale this morning and the home opener is already sold out. Hopefully the rush for tickets for the home opener will spill over to other games this season. I'm sure the fact that the Jays are playing the Red Sox in their home opening series helped along the quick sell out. It would be nice if the entire opening series were to sell out.

I'm hoping that attendance will be up for the Jays for the season. We'll have the fun watching Brett Lawrie for the full season. We keep getting told how having a Canadian on the team will help attendance, so it is time to see some proof. I think the team should be exciting to watch, we a lot of good young players, but I'd imagine winning will be the only thing that really gets the people out to the games. They can be as exciting as any team in baseball and many folks would notice, unless they also win. Maybe we'll get off to a good start and the home opener won't be the last sell out of the season.

I'm planning a trip to Toronto in June to see the games from the 11th to 17th. We'll try to arrange some get some way to get together with people from the site while there.

How many games are you going to see at Roger Centre this year?

I studied the minor league K-rates of successful young big league pitchers the past season, and found that most of them had K-rates over 20% in the minors. That led me to post an article arguing the importance of K% in the summer. However, what I did not do was post the results of those successful big leaguers. Now, I'll take another look at this analysis, and expand the number of pitchers and list the results here in this article. I generally assume the age of 23 or lower to be age appropriate for AAA, with each level below that one year lower. So 22 for AA, 21 for A+ etc. I'm using a minimum of 50 IP for each level.

Of course, which pitchers can be described as successful big leaguers is a bit subjective, but I think the list contains few pitchers that wouldn't be welcome on most, if not all major league rotations. If I omitted or included pitchers you disagree with, please bring it up in the comments.

Rookies in 2006

Jered Weaver - A+/AA (22): 29.4%, AAA (23): 31.5%
Matt Cain - A (18): 29.7%, A+/AA (19): 24.5%, AAA (20): 28.1%
Francisco Liriano - Rk- (17): 28.1%, A (18): 25.8%, A+ (20): 26.1%, AA/AAA (21): 30.9%
Justin Verlander - A+/AA (22): 30.0%
Cole Hamels - A/A+ (19): 38.4%
Josh Johnson - A (19): 16.9%, A+ (20): 20.6%, AA (21): 18.9%
James Shields - A (19): 21.4%, A+ (21): 18.8%, A+ (22): 18.5%, AA (23): 23.8%
Anibal Sanchez - A- (20): 32.6%, A+/AA (21): 28.4%, AA (22): 25.1%
Jon Lester - A (19): 15.7%, A+ (20): 25.4%, AA (21): 27.1%
Adam Wainwright - Rk-/Rk (18): 34.5%, A (19): 26.6%, A+ (20): 23.9%, AA (21): 21.4%, AAA (22): 22.7%
Matt Garza - A (21): 27.2%, A+/AA/AAA (22): 29.0%, AAA (23): 23.7%
Chad Billingsley - Rk (18): 27.6%, A+/AA (19): 28.5%, AA (20): 26.9%, AAA (21): 26.3%
Jonathan Sanchez - A (22): 31.1%, AA/AAA (23): 34.7%
Shaun Marcum - A/A+ (22): 25.8%, AA/AAA (23): 19.4%
C.J. Wilson - Rk/A (20): 26.7%, A+ (21): 16.3%, AA (22): 16.5%
Edinson Volquez - A/A+ (20): 20.4%, A+/AA (21): 24.2%, AAA (22): 25.5%

Rookies in 2007

Yovani Gallardo - A (19): 21.9%, A+/AA (20): 30.8%, AAA (21): 34.9%
Ubaldo Jimenez - Rk (18): 22.6%, A (19): 21.4%, A+/AA (21): 22.3%, AA/AAA (22): 23.1%
Dallas Braden - A+/AA (21): 23.2%, AA/AAA (23): 28.5%, AAA (24): 25.6%
John Danks - A/A+ (19): 25.1%, A+/AA (20): 20.5%, AA (21): 25.2%
John Lannan - A- (20): 13.9%, A (21): 18.6%, A+/AA/AAA (22): 15.0%

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Gary Carter was my favorite player when I first started following baseball.

When I was young, before the Blue Jays came along, the Expos were my team. They were the team you could see on TV in Canada. Not every game, like you do now but weekly anyway. It was a different world back then, you couldn't follow the games on your computer.

I've read folks say that the 'golden age' of anything is when you are a 12 year old. When I was 12, Gary Carter was a young catcher. His came in second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1975, he really was robbed, but then he was playing mostly RF and he wasn't a good right fielder. The Expos already had a catcher, Barry Foote, though Foote really wasn't a guy that should make you move Carter off his position.

Carter played the game the way I'd like to think I would, if I had, you know, talent. Seemed happy to be out there. He was always smiling. Always signing autographs. And he was always going as hard as he could. He ran to first on walks. He ran down the line as hard as he could on every play. They called him the Kid because he played the game like a kid would.

His teammates didn't always like that. I've seen several say that Carter always knew where the camera was. That he showed off, hustled for show. And maybe he did. I don't know. I don't care either. I thought that if I played, that's the way I'd do it. I'd be happy to get to play a kids game for a living.

He was the best catcher in baseball for several years. He was terrific on defense. Most seasons he threw out 40 to 50% of the base runners who were dumb enough to try to steal off him. I know catcher ERA isn't much of a stat but year after year Expo pitchers had better ERA's with Carter than with anyone else catching for them.

The Expos played the hell out of him. He played 150+ games in several seasons as an Expo, and, with that wonderful carpet at the Big O, it is no surprise that he ended up with knee problems. But , free agency was something new back then, and the Expos knew they didn't own his future so they might as well get as much out of his present as they could.

The day he was traded to the Mets was a Monday and Monday night football was on. The trade came across and Howard Cosell read it and then he said 'this can't be right, there must be more going to the Expos'. But there wasn't and it wasn't right. We got robbed.

I was thrilled when Carter made it to the Hall of Fame. Even happier when he went in wearing an Expo cap. I guess he wasn't all that happy about it, he would have preferred to go in as a Met but the better part of his career was with the Expos. I saw his plaque when we got to Cooperstown a few years ago.

When I first made a few dollars, back when I was a young teen, one of the first things I bought myself was a Expos Jersey with Gary Carter's number 8 on the back. My youngest boy wears it now, my wife fixed it up for him for Christmas this year. The lettering on it was torn. She did a very nice job, I wish it still fit me.

One of the few autographed baseballs I have is from Gary Carter. I also have a picture with him (and my son) that's the background of my computer now. He was managing in the Golden Baseball League and his team came to Calgary, a few years ago on Father's Day. Carter spent part of the day signing, raising money for the Gary Carter Foundation. I'm glad I got that chance to, briefly, talk to him.

I'm very sad to hear his passing, he was far too young.