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Baseball America 2013 Minor League Player of the Year: Byron Buxton
More than 250 players in the full-season minors out-homered Byron Buxton this season. Yet that didn’t prevent the 19-year-old center fielder from ranking as the No. 1 prospect in baseball at midseason or from winning the Midwest League MVP award or from—spoiler alert—ranking as the top prospect in both Class A leagues in which he played this season.
The Twins even ticketed their uber-prospect, in the words of one scout, “The best minor leaguer I’ve ever seen,” for the Arizona Fall League in October.
Now, Buxton can add one more feather to his cap: Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year, a distinction he sewed up with an all-around game seldom seen from a teenager in his first full season.
In stops at low Class A Cedar Rapids and—following a late-June promotion—high Class A Fort Myers, Buxton hit a cumulative .334/.424/.520 with 49 extra-base hits, 55 stolen bases and a sparkling 76-to-105 walk-to-strikeout ratio in 125 games. He led the minors with 18 triples, finished second with 109 runs scored—one behind Marcus Semien of the White Sox—and 12th in stolen bases.
More impressively, Buxton ranked sixth in the minor league batting race, 10th in hits (163) and seventh in on-base percentage, despite being a full year younger than any other member of those top-10 lists.
Recent Winners:
2012: Wil Myers
2011: Mike Trout
2010: Jeremy Hellickson
2009: Jason Heyward
2008: Matt Wieters
http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2013-minor-league-player-of-the-year-byron-buxton/