Machado & Schoop

While the current Orioles team continues to struggle, I tend to turn my eyes towards their Minor League teams. The organization does have a number of good prospects rising through the system, highlighted by two that were selected to play in Sunday's Futures Game. Coincidentally, both are middle infielders who play for the hi-A Frederick Keys.

Manny Machado was the Orioles 1st round draft pick (3rd overall) in the 2010 draft and is currently listed by Baseball America as the O's Top Prospect and was recently named the #5 prospect in the Minor Leagues in BA's Midseason Top 50 Rankings.

 

Manny was the starting shortstop for Team USA at the Futures Game and went 0-2, flying out to right in both at-bats. He did have three chances in the field and made all plays cleanly, including a sweet short hop scoop of a screamer hit towards his feet.

Manny has been playing for the Keys since his promotion from lo-A Delmarva in late June. I featured his first professional bobblehead that the Shorebirds gave away in Saturday's post.

I will say that Manny's signature is already not much more than 2 M's so I'm worried about how it might look if/when he makes it to the Majors.

Jonathan Schoop (pronounced scope) was ranked by BA as the O's #10 prospect heading into this season. He is a rare success story for the O's International Scouting efforts and was signed out of Curacao in 2008.

Jonathan played for Team World and came into the game in the bottom of the sixth inning as a defensive replacement. He singled in his only at-bat to lead off the seventh inning but was unfortunately picked off shortly thereafter to end the inning.

Schoop's signature is rather illegible (it kind of looks he signed his first name over his last) but extremely unique and I honestly like it quite a bit. Especially on the Bowman card, his autograph looks almost exactly like the pre-printed version, which isn't too common to see.

Congrats to Manny & Jonathan for hanging with baseball's top prospects and good luck to this blogger's favorite Oriole, Matt Wieters, in tonight's All-Star Game.