Minor leaguers often try and one-up the major leaguers. Dickey gives up five runs in the first? The Bisons gave up five in the first AND five in the second. They lost 14-5. Give them credit for scoring at least.

Roberto Osuna was the story for the Lugnuts, Efrain Nieves was almost as good for Dunedin. The Fisher Cats had a great come from behind win thanks to John Tolisano.

Buffalo and Lansing were the winners on Saturday. Buffalo were led by Andy LaRoche who had 4 hits and a home run. Kevin Pillar also had four hits but in a losing cause for New Hampshire. Deck McGuire was either bad or showed promise depending on your perspective. Alonzo Gonzalez pitched six shutout innings for Lansing whose offense was spread around. Aaron Sanchez pitched mostly well for Dunedin, four three up, three down innings and one three run inning.

The bats were hot on Thursday but were a lot cooler on Friday. The Lugnuts won with strong performances by Taylor Cole, Christian Lopes and Emilio Guerrero. Dunedin had to go to extra innings to win. The Bisons got an eighth inning home run from Luis Jimenez to break the tie. Anthony Gose scored two runs thanks to two hits.

Usually the season starts with the pitchers ahead of the hitters. The baby Jays had their hitting shoes on on Thursday with Anthony Gose, Kenny Wilson and Marcus Knecht leading the way.

Here are the opening day rosters for the minor league teams.  The big story could be the DL, AJ Jimenez, Sean Nolin, Danny Barnes, Chad Jenkins, John Stilson, Tyler Ybarra and Evan Crawford all start the season on the DL.

My first quick look also notes that:

Marcus walden makes the jump to AA after a half season ion Dunedin.  I liked Walden last year but AA is a big test for his style of pitching.

Alonzo Gonzalez makes the jump to lansing after a brief debut last season.  Gonzalez was a JC selection as was further advanced than the high school pitchers.

Daniel Norris and Roberto Osuna are also starting in Lansing.

Emilio Guerrero beat out a lot of competition to be the shortstop in Lansing.

Chris Hawkins returns to Lansing for a repeat.

 

I have added more comments at the bottom.

My copy of the bible arrived in the mailbox — the Baseball America 2013 Prospect Handbook! Texas prospect Jurickson Profar is on the cover.

2012 first round pick D.J. Davis is the highest rated position player in the Jays farm system according to Baseball America.

The Toronto Blue Jays and the Vancouver Canadians have agreed to a two-year extension of their Player Development Contract. The original agreement was in effect until 2014 but the two sides agreed to continue their partnership through the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
The Vancouver Canadians have won two Northwest League championships since becoming a Blue Jays affiliate in 2011.

The Jays have a full staff in the minors again with a few names we have heard of before.  From Tim Raines to Stubby Clapp.

So, we now have Baseball Prospectus' top 10 to go with Baseball America's, FanGraphs, John Sickles, and our own.  How do they compare? 
Note: MLB.com just added in to expand the diversity of the lists.

The Buffalo Bisons have introduced a new logo for 2013 to mark its brand new affiliation with the Blue Jays.

The Bisons have ditched its New York Mets-inspired colors and logo for a red and blue look.

Baseball America published their top ten prospects today and it looks a lot like the Batters Box top 10.  In addition the BA guys did an AL East podcast yesterday that had some Blue Jay related discussion.

 

There will also be a subscriber chat at 2pm today.  We will add some commentary here.

There were a number of prospects who were named on the Minor League Crew's ballots who didn't make the Top 30 list. And each crew member no doubt considered several more prospects for their personal Top 30s who didn't make the final list.

Here are a few prospects who missed the final list that our minor league correspondents chose to highlight. This list isn't intended as a ranking of the next prospects in order, but is rather a sampling of some intriguing names in the system. Last year's feature included a player who got 111 major league plate appearances this year and a Webster Award winner. Without further ado, here are some prospects to keep an eye on next year, presented in alphabetical order.

Welcome to the creme de la creme, the number one through ten prospects.  In case you missed it number 11 through 20 are here, and number 21 to 30 are here.

We hope you enjoyed this top 30 and the hope it brings to the future of the Blue Jays organization.   Check back tomorrow for a few who missed the top 30.

Today we look at the prospects rated 20 though 11. For prospects 30-21, click here.

Welcome to the Batters Box top 30 Blue Jay prospects for 2012. Six of your trusted minor league correspondents pooled their votes to come up with the list. The same trusty six shared the task of writing the prospect descriptions you see below.

The system has seen a lot of movement since 2011.  Anthony Gose, Drew Hutchison, David Cooper, Luis Perez and Moises Sierra are no longer rookies.  Nestor Molina, Carlos Perez, Asher Wojciechowski, Kevin Comer and  Joe Musgrove were traded.  That is ten prospects who are off the list before players who dropped because of poor performance.

In total, forty-five prospects received at least one vote.  Nineteen of the top thirty were named on all six ballots.  There can be plenty of debate as to who should have made it, particularly here, in the bottom 10.  We hope the wisdom of our crowd has delivered a great top thirty.

As usual we have split the top 30 into three installments, running Monday through Wednesday. On Thursday we will look at some prospects that did not make the list but are favourites of one of our writers.

We hope you enjoy the list and the discussion.