[duncan_idaho]

I might be the only person who likes Aldaberto Mondesi more than Jason Parks over at Baseball Prospectus.

I have been touting the guy here, there and everywhere since he early last summer (basically the start of Idaho Falls' season). It started as a side follow of Elier Hernandez... quickly realized "Hey, Raul's kid is hitting over .300 with good slug at age 16" ... kept waiting for the big drop-off to come, and it never did.

I think he's going to EXPLODE up every prospect list by this time next season. Idaho Falls is a tough place for industry scouts to get to... but he'll get more exposure this season, and I think the more people that see him, the more people that will fall in love with him.

I have a buddy who still works covering baseball who texted me about Mondesi after seeing him for the first time. Basically asking me if I knew about the kid... it was a pretty humorous exchange.

He had only seen the kid take BP when he started texting me. I told him to wait until he saw him in the field. More effusive texts came in after that...

Just because it's early, and I'm waiting for an web conference to start... here's Profar's line from short-season Spokane (low-A) at age 17:
.250/.323/.373 SLG... 8/11 SB ... 23 XBH in 252 AB

Here's Mondesi's line from Idaho Falls (which is Rookie league, one level lower than Spokane) at age 16/17:

.290/.346/.386 SLG ... 11/13 SB.... 12 XBH in 203 AB (Profar was a 2B machine in Spokane, but Mondesi hit a handful of HR and 3B and hit for a higher average, thus the difference in SLG).

If you're just comparing numbers, what Mondesi did at Idaho Falls is roughly equivalent to what Profar did at Spokane at age 17.