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October 3, 2012

Prospects Will Break Your Heart

Fall Instructional League Wrap-Up

by Jason Parks

After ten days of standing in the sun, eating food that comes in bovine feed bags, chewing sunflower seeds like they contained the secrets of love and happiness, and falling asleep in a motel room whose game experience was visible to the senses, I’m finally back in New York, sitting in a small apartment thinking about the activity taking place at the Fall Instructional League. I miss the baseball. I miss the rush of walking up to a sparsely attended field, finding my spot on a deserted island of bleachers, removing a towel from my bag to cover my neck and head, placing a beach hat over said towel to provide further protection from the sun, placing a stopwatch in my left hand, and going to work for three hours. My gaze rarely would leave the action on the field, except to chat with a friend or to enjoy a taste of water from a cooler that provided the coldest water on the planet. A few more days in the sun and I would have attempted a romantic maneuver on that cooler.

The FIL (fall instructional league; you get it) was a little strange this year, as I didn’t get a chance to see many of the teams I consider to be standards during my backfield adventures in the Spring; teams like the Padres, Mariners, Indians, and Reds. Not every team located in Arizona plays a full fall schedule, and with only ten days to score prospect dope, I had to take advantage of the talent playing games in my vicinity. I saw a ton of Rangers and Royals action, which is to be expected for multiple reasons: 1) I stay in Surprise, AZ, home base of the Rangers and Royals, and the complex is familiar and minutes from my hotel; 2) the talent on the Rangers and Royals FIL rosters might be able to beat the Astros major league team; and 3) Jorge Alfaro doesn’t workout in Glendale.

I wasn’t just limited to the Rangers and Royals, as I also saw the White Sox, an advanced split squad of Brewers and Mariners prospects, the Dodgers, a traveling Korean team, and a traveling Mexican Pacific League team. I was also able to watch Francisco Lindor, but that was from a telephoto lens and he wasn’t exactly at the fields. The talent level was high, with five-tool dreams like