8 or 9 Dodgers Prospects to Play in Prestigious Arizona Fall League

Dodgers fans meet the Salt River Rafters, a combination of top prospects from the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Tigers, Astros, & Rockies.

Managed by Stu Cole, the Manager of the Rockies AAA Colorado Springs Sky Sox, the Salt River Raftersroster will feature top Dodgers, Astros, Tigers, Rockies and Diamondbacks prospects. The Dodgers and Astros each get an extra Taxi Squad member, who are only eligible to play on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The rosters consists of 20 pitchers, 4 catchers, 8 infielders and 6 outfielders. Kyle Russell is one of the Taxi guys, so you hate to root for injuries, but hopefully he gets to play more than Sunday’s and Wednesday’s. Other Dodgers include OF Alex Castellanos, obtained from the Cardinals for Rafael Furcal, and SS Jake “Late Night” Lemmerman, who could earn valuable time at 2B with Dee Gordon clearly entrenched as the Dodgers SS of the future.

Late Night made it to AA this year and was solid hitting a combined .283 with 10 dingers. He’s clearly the Dodgers top infield prospect. Catcher Gorman Erickson rounds out the Dodgers position players.

I’m surprised 2011 Dodgers Minor League Player of the Year Scott Van Slyke is not participating, I couldn’t find any information why, perhaps he’ll try his trade in Winter Ball down South which would be Muy Bueno.

Dodgers pitchers include fire-baller and Stephen Ames, big lefty Cole St. Clair, and Josh Wall, all 3 who are coming off of solid seasons, and a guy from my neck of the woods, former University of Utah Ute, Stephen Fife, who was obtain in the controversial Trayvon Robinson trade.

The 9th Dodger is Angelo Songco, who may or may not be playing for the Surprise Saguaros. Songco had a monster 2011 after switching to first-base belting 29 dingers with 114 RBI. He was a Taxi squad guy, up until about a week ago but he has since been removed from Surprise’s roster, so we’ll see if he plays or not. Brandon Lennox over at True Blue LA has a solid article on the squad.

Needless to say, since guys like Jerry Sands, Javy Guerra, Trayvon Robinson, and Scott Elbert all participated in the AFL last year, Dodgers fans and all prospect junkies will want to keep tabs on the haps in the AFL.

Oh yeah some dudes named Bryce Harper and Mike Trout will also be playing, on the same team no less, yeah that’s fair. So there is plenty of baseball left for those of us who like to keep an eye on Who’s Next. MLB.com has a ton of info, of course, but for my money check out Top Prospect Alert Minor League Blog.

Follow them on Twitter as they will have as good of coverage as anyone.

Also don’t forget to stop by FanSided’s Minor League site, Seedlings to Stars, as they are putting out a ridiculous amount of prospect content right now.

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Games start tomorrow so between that and the MLB playoffs there’s still plenty of baseball left, even during Football season.