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All The Hype
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His name is Ryan Strieby.
With all these top prospect lists being published, and this guy not making the lists for seemingly no reason, I feel like now is the time for me to bring his name up for discussion.
I have been prospecting for some time now, and for one reason or another, I really love to prospect/collect young players in the Detroit Tigers' organization. I'm pretty familiar with many of the players in their system, and I even admit that I have some stashes/mini-collections of some of them. One of those guys is in my opinion the most underrated prospect in all of baseball.
His name is Ryan Strieby. He is a hulk of a man (6'5" 235 pounds), and spent 2008 playing first base for the A-Advanced Lakeland Flying Tigers. Strieby has a great skill-set to work with, as he has enormous power, can hit for some decent average, and plays gold glove caliber defense. But don’t take my word for it, because you don’t need to. His numbers speak for themselves. In 2008, Strieby batted .278 with league-leading 29 homeruns and 94 RBIs. He also slugged .563, had an OBP of .352 and an OPS of .915. His complete statline can be seen here on milb.com. A graduate of Kentucky University, where he was the SEC player of the year and a 1st Team All-American selection in 2006, Strieby is still only 23 years old. In 2008, he was named the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year, and rightfully so. I am not sure how he is not making anyone’s top prospect lists because he is not only one of the most talented players in the Tigers’ organization, but he had one of the best seasons in all the minor leagues in 2008.
To me, he is the most underrated prospect in all of baseball, because he gets absolutely no attention despite putting up monster numbers last season. He didn’t make BA’s preliminary Detroit organizational top 10 prospect list. When asked about it, they basically said that they had overlooked him because they couldn’t come up with any real reason for why he was not on the list at all, when he clearly should have been #2 (behind Rick Porcello and all of his potential). Now how is it that Strieby wins the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year award (yes, the best player in their entire farm system in 2008), but he wasn’t good enough to even be on the top 10 list? It doesn’t make any sense to me either. Honestly, he had a better season than most of the top prospects of baseball. He even outperformed the second coming of God himself, Matt LaPorta. Granted, LaPorta was playing in AA and Strieby was in A-Advanced, Strieby had a much better season (and I’m willing to have a friendly argument to defend this statement if anyone wants to).
Strieby only has one card and that is a chrome base card from 2008 Bowman, which should probably be selling for $4.00 apiece right now (but obviously are not). But the fact that he only had one card in 2008 dramatically will increase its value down the road, as it is his ONLY first-year card (think about a guy like Jay Bruce who didn’t have very many FY cards and the prices that his FY stuff were selling for). I think Strieby is an excellent investment, and I’ll be very honest here and say that that is why I have a pretty sizable stash of him (although I am now done buying as my prospecting funds are depleted).
The bottom line is that Ryan Strieby is a monster, and he deserves some attention. I can't think of a more underrated prospect (if you think you know one, I'd love to hear about it). And in honor of me coming out of the closet about my stash and trying to pimp one of my favorite prospects a little bit, I have a new sig to show off part of my stash.
Any Thoughts?
With all these top prospect lists being published, and this guy not making the lists for seemingly no reason, I feel like now is the time for me to bring his name up for discussion.
I have been prospecting for some time now, and for one reason or another, I really love to prospect/collect young players in the Detroit Tigers' organization. I'm pretty familiar with many of the players in their system, and I even admit that I have some stashes/mini-collections of some of them. One of those guys is in my opinion the most underrated prospect in all of baseball.
His name is Ryan Strieby. He is a hulk of a man (6'5" 235 pounds), and spent 2008 playing first base for the A-Advanced Lakeland Flying Tigers. Strieby has a great skill-set to work with, as he has enormous power, can hit for some decent average, and plays gold glove caliber defense. But don’t take my word for it, because you don’t need to. His numbers speak for themselves. In 2008, Strieby batted .278 with league-leading 29 homeruns and 94 RBIs. He also slugged .563, had an OBP of .352 and an OPS of .915. His complete statline can be seen here on milb.com. A graduate of Kentucky University, where he was the SEC player of the year and a 1st Team All-American selection in 2006, Strieby is still only 23 years old. In 2008, he was named the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year, and rightfully so. I am not sure how he is not making anyone’s top prospect lists because he is not only one of the most talented players in the Tigers’ organization, but he had one of the best seasons in all the minor leagues in 2008.
To me, he is the most underrated prospect in all of baseball, because he gets absolutely no attention despite putting up monster numbers last season. He didn’t make BA’s preliminary Detroit organizational top 10 prospect list. When asked about it, they basically said that they had overlooked him because they couldn’t come up with any real reason for why he was not on the list at all, when he clearly should have been #2 (behind Rick Porcello and all of his potential). Now how is it that Strieby wins the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year award (yes, the best player in their entire farm system in 2008), but he wasn’t good enough to even be on the top 10 list? It doesn’t make any sense to me either. Honestly, he had a better season than most of the top prospects of baseball. He even outperformed the second coming of God himself, Matt LaPorta. Granted, LaPorta was playing in AA and Strieby was in A-Advanced, Strieby had a much better season (and I’m willing to have a friendly argument to defend this statement if anyone wants to).
Strieby only has one card and that is a chrome base card from 2008 Bowman, which should probably be selling for $4.00 apiece right now (but obviously are not). But the fact that he only had one card in 2008 dramatically will increase its value down the road, as it is his ONLY first-year card (think about a guy like Jay Bruce who didn’t have very many FY cards and the prices that his FY stuff were selling for). I think Strieby is an excellent investment, and I’ll be very honest here and say that that is why I have a pretty sizable stash of him (although I am now done buying as my prospecting funds are depleted).
The bottom line is that Ryan Strieby is a monster, and he deserves some attention. I can't think of a more underrated prospect (if you think you know one, I'd love to hear about it). And in honor of me coming out of the closet about my stash and trying to pimp one of my favorite prospects a little bit, I have a new sig to show off part of my stash.
Any Thoughts?
