The universal Top 2 both had some spots on their seasons, but I wouldn’t call either one a major disappointments either, and getting further down you get some really substantial improvements.

Going through Kevin Goldstein’s preseason Top 11 list:

1. Fernando Martinez – Tore up Triple-A, still very young, injury ended his season early.

2. Wilmer Flores – Numbers hardly eye popping, but made lots of contact, plenty impressive in context though. Calling his season “down” is pretty short sighted in terms of prospect evaluation. A 17 year old striking out just 13.6% of the time in full season balls against guys mostly 2-4 years older than him is a mild success in itself, even if the production wasn’t there yet.

3. Jefry Marte – Okay, down year, no doubt here.

4. Brad Holt – Pitched well in HiA, struggled a bit in Double-A, but still missed plenty of bats. Reports were encouraging on his secondary stuff, but seemed to lose a little life on his fastball down the stretch. Either way he made some progress and its hard to call his year “down”

5. Jon Niese – Betrayed by his defense in the first half, by season’s end, his ERA came back into alignment with his peripherals. The injury was late enough in the season where you still have to call his season a success.

6. Reese Havens – Poor BABIP betrayed his excellent peripheral rates. A very good prospect who did nothing to hurt his status. Still finished 10th in the FSL in OPS despite a .277 BABIP. Also tied for 6th in the FSL in HR despite missing time with multiple small injuries. Oh yeah, and he’s a middle infielder.

7. Jenrry Mejia – Can you say helium? One of the top pitching prospects in the game at this point after not even cracking Top 100 lists a year ago.

8. Ike Davis – Went from as far off the map as a first round pick can get to ranked #13 overall in the deepest league in the minors, and the #1 first base prospect in the EL according to BA’s rankings as well.

9. Bobby Parnell – Had a very reasonable rookie season despite taxiing between the pen and rotation without any transitional “stretching out” period whatsoever. Still looks like a reliever in the long-run, but looked like that going into the season anyway. Hard to say his year was below expectation.

10. Eddie Kunz – He sucked before, still sucks. No change.

11. Scott Moviel – Projection still hasn’t gone anywhere.

Even if you rule out Fernando due to the early season injury and Kunz because he sucked to begin with, seven of these guys either improved or, at the very least, did nothing to hurt their status (Flores, Holt, Niese, Havens, Mejia, Davis, Parnell). And not even appearing on this list are Jeurys Familia, Ruben Tejada, Josh Thole, or Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who all had excellent and substantially improved years and all of whom should be making appearances on Top 100 lists.

How about the fact that 5 of the Top 10 OPS leaders in the FSL played for St. Lucie? #1 Kirk Nieuwenhuis, #3 Zach Lutz, #5 Brahiam Maldonado, #7 Carlos Guzman, and Havens. All those guys range from very good to great prospects aside from perhaps Maldonado, who was a bit old for the league and has done little else to inspire confidence in his minor league career. And That’s not even including Davis, whose promotion left him too short on AB’s to qualify, however his .867 OPS would have dwarfed the competition (Nieuwenhuis finished at .824), and he would have finished #1 in SLG and #3 in OBP if he had qualified.

Oh, and just for good measure, Kyle Allen FTW! How about Eric Niesen, too? He had a very good year and looks like a legit prospect.