Being a Rays fan I've become accustomed to - of all things - looking forward to the Rule 5 draft - even after the Josh Hamilton incident and disappointingly selling away our first pick last year. This year it appears the Rays will take Indians outfielder Brian Barton first overall, and while doing some research on him I ran across this article from Baseball America that basically runs down the top 25 or so eligible players for this week's draft. I took it upon myself to create a spreadsheet for hitters and pitchers and do some averaging out to see which players are the cream of the crop of the class, with that in mind here's the visual proof:

Barton has the highest OPS of any of the hitters, and seems like the closest to being ready for major league action - boding well for his chances of being taken first overall. Whitney is interesting because despite his low average homerun totals he jacked 32 between two levels last year. D'Antona could probably be a servicable player off of a major league bench. Valbuena has a good glove, and last season had a very nice offensive season, the problem is judging whether that was an anomaly or the beginning.

As for pitchers Guevara screams middle reliever - per BA he throws a screwball and per his numbers doesn't walk too many. Pino is the other interesting pitcher for me, he's one of those "results" guys who doesn't have anything that screams he'll be successful other than his minor league numbers.