Hi everyone! It's good to be back. I hope everyone is doing well. Anyway, here's the next installment of our top prospect list. Tom just checked in with #46-50 yesterday.

45. Wilmer Becerra, OF/SS - a 17-year old signed out of Venezuela at just 16, Becerra came over as a shortstop but his future is apparently in the outfield. Becerra is one of many significant international free agent signings the Jays have made during the Alex Anthopolous era. He will have a long way to go, but he could see some rookie ball in 2012. Becerra, a righthanded hitter, has speed and strength. It's unclear whether he'll be able to stick in center field, but he has drawn positive comments for his work ethic and makeup. Obviously, his development as a hitter will be all-important.

44. Dawel Lugo, SS - Another significant international free agent signing, Lugo hails from Bani, Dominican Republic and was also signed as a 16-year old. The Jays spent $1.3 million on the young shortstop. At 6', 175 lbs at just 16, Lugo isn't fleet of foot and so isn't a lock to stick at shortstop, but he is said to have good hands and a strong arm. It's unclear whether he'll be able to continue at short for a while in the mold of a Jhonny Peralta, or whether he'll be moving to third base in a few years. Lugo projects well as a hitter, with good bat speed and natural loft in his swing, so he looks like he could be a good power bat for the infield down the line. Lugo was assigned to the Dominican Summer League after his signing but you'd think he would have a shot at rookie ball this year.

43. Anthony DeSclafani, RHP - DeSclarfani, a Freehold, NJ native (Bruuuuuuuce!!!) was signed by the Boston Red Sox out of high school (22nd round) but he chose to attend college at Florida University. DeSclafani was impressive in the famed Cape Cod Baseball League and had a nice junior season as a Gator before the Jays selected him 199th overall. DeSclafani hasn't started much in his young career but is said to have impressive stuff that hasn't quite translated into dominating stats because he hasn't quite harnassed it yet.

42. Christian Lopes, SS/2B - Lopes, a southern california native selected by the Jays in the 7th round in 2011 out of high school, is said to have nice soft hands and to be athletic around the bag. Some concerns about his arm and his middling range and speed suggest that he might end up at second base, but he does project nicely as a hitter. The right-handed hitter is well-regarded for his skill with the bat and should field well enough at second to let his bat do the talking.

41. Kellen Sweeney, 3B - Sweeney, the brother of major-leaguer Ryan Sweeney, was a well-regarded second-round pick out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Kellen had a nice adjustment to pro ball after being drafted (.267/.450/.444), which is always a good sign for a high school hitter. Unfortunately 2011 was a lost year for Sweeney - he was assigned to Bluefield and suffered a freak injury in which he fell during a rundown and broke a small bone at the base of his thumb. The good news - the injury wasn't anything chronic and had nothing to do with his arm (he had TJ surgery in high school). Therefore, with a healthy season, Sweeney could be right back on track, particularly considering he's still just 20 and won't be 21 until September. The Jays are reportedly still quite high on the lefty hitting infielder, who is said to have a sweet line drive swing and a nice approach at the plate.

Well that's all for now. Woodman will be back with the next five. Enjoy!

The Toronto Blue Jays will not be attending any arbitration hearings for the 15th year in a row after agreeing to a two-year contract with 30-year old reliever Casey Janssen worth $5.9 million. It includes a club option in 2014, which if picked up, will pay Janssen $4.0 million. Janssen has agreed to make an annual donation to the Jays Care Foundation.

Welcome back, Casey! Time to splurge on a downtown condo.

Update: According to MLB Trade Rumors, Janssen will earn $2 million in 2012 (splitting the middle between the arbitration figures) and $3.9 in 2013. He earned $1.095 million last season.

Casey Janssen signed a two-year, $5.9 contract with a team option for a third year at $4.0 million.

Janssen was 6-0 with a 2.26 ERA last year. He's pitched 111 games the last two seasons with an ERA of 3.31 over the last two seasons, striking out 8.4/9, while walking 2.6/9. He's been a great part of our bullpen. I was hoping he'd move up to the setup role this year but we've picked up a bunch of arms for the pen this off-season. He'll be competing with Jason Frasor, Darren Oliver and Francisco Cordero for high leverage work.

Casey has long been a favorite of mine so I'm glad he'll be around for the next few years.

Its time to get out top prospect list again. Each of the last 4 years we've added 10 to our list. We've gone from a top 10 prospects list to a 40 player list last year and now a 50 player list this year. The Jays minor league system has improved to the point that it seems worthwhile to look at 50 players in our little rundown.

Woodman663, Hugo and I each put together lists and we've combined them to make this list. We'll post them by groups of 5.

There isn't a lot of information out there about some of the guys at the back of our list.

50. Dalton Pompey: Dalton is the only guy of our 50 that only appeared on just one of our individual lists. Woodman likes him quite a bit. He's a switch hitting center fielder, from Mississauga Ontario. He has a a lot of potential. Just 18 last summer, he split the season between the Gulf Coast League and Bluefield, hitting .239/.358/.367 between the two, with 5 home runs and 23 stolen bases (just caught once). Speed and a good eye at the plate is a good combination. Hitting 5 home runs in pro ball at 18 years old suggests there could be some power there when he fills out.

49. Jesus Gonzalez: An international free agent signing from Venezuela from this past year. The Jays gave him a $1.4 million contract. A 6'1", 195 lb, outfielder, he's got a strong arm and the Jays figure he'll have speed, power and all the things you'd want from a corner outfielder, but, since he's 17, he's a long ways off.

48. Gabriel Cenas: Another international free agent signing, this one from 2010. He just turned 18 in October. He didn't hit much in his first shot in the DSL, just .208/..368/.226 in 19 games, not that you can read anything out of a handful of at bats. The team figures that he'll develop power and he's said to have a good arm at third base. At 6'1" and 175 he has a lot of filling out to do yet. He's a long ways off.

47. Jairo Labourt: An 17 year old international signing from the Dominican. He's a long way from the majors but he's 6'4", and can already throw 90+ MPH. You'd have to figure that, as he fills out, he'll add a few MPH to that fastball. Lefties that can do that are few. They say he has an 'advanced feel for breaking balls'. Jairo made 12 starts for the Jays Dominican Summer League team, posting a 2.23 ERA, allowing 29 hits, and 14 with 29 strikeouts in 36.1 innings.

46. Evan Crawford: Crawford was an 8th round draft pick back in 2008, out of Auburn University. After starting in previous seasons, last year he spent the entire season in the bullpen at New Hampshire. The Jay put him on their 40-man roster this summer. Minor league relievers aren't generally prospects but this one is left-handed, can hit 94 on the radar gun and they say his best pitch is his curve. He struck out 62 in 51 innings, for the Fisher Cats, while walking 21. He gets ground outs, 2.19 per fly out last year. He pitched in the Arizona Fall League this year and did a good job with a 3.18 ERA and 16 strikeouts in 17 innings. He should, at very least, be able to make the majors as a LOOGY.

Hugo should be around with numbers 41-45 in the next day or two.

Ever wonder just how different the arsenals of knuckleballers are, relative to the rest of pitchers? Well, we already discussed how pitcher arsenals are analogous to ecological communities and how some of the statistical techniques community ecologists use can be transferred to describing and testing relationships for pitchers. Operating under that assumption, I used a technique called Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) to graphically display pitcher arsenals.

I downloaded the pitch type usage of all pitchers last season who threw 150 innings or more and used a multivariate method called nonmetric multidimensional scaling to graphically display how pitch usage differs from one pitcher to another. The first step is to create a matrix of how different each pitcher's arsenal is from every other pitcher (called dissimilarity scores and based on the Bray-Curtis index of community dissimilarity). Once this matrix has been created, the technique compares each of those scores to one another and assigns each pitcher's arsenal a set of (x,y) coordinates in two-dimensional space. All that remains is to plot those coordinates and we see similarities and differences between pitcher arsenals. Now, the axes do not actually mean anything. Although we can test variables to see how they correspond to this ordination, all the figure below shows is how pitcher arsenals differ in relation to one another.

I think the results speak for themselves but I'll just quickly say that Dan Haren and Roy Halladay are separated due to cutter usage. R.A. Dickey, while still quite far removed from the rest of the pack is nowhere near as far away as Tim Wakefield because he uses his fastball more (22% of the time vs. 9% of the time) and his knuckleball less (75% vs. 89%).

Anyway, this doesn't really mean anything, I just thought you might find it interesting.

Thanks to The Smiths for today's title.