Who Wins In a Fantasy Baseball Prospects Final Four Bracket?

Every major question in sports deserves a bracket.

And since Major League Baseball prospects are, at best, gigantic question marks, why not put the hottest names of the diamond spring through a little March Madness?

There's plenty of players that could make the difference for your fantasy team, but who will make the biggest difference?

I am constantly annoyed at the lack of editorial followthrough when it comes to prospects. Most of the big sites - ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, MLB - will publish a list around March 1 based on hype from Baseball America or offseason position-battle scuttlebutt.

But when it comes time for us fantasy diehards to actually draft these phenoms, there's no updates on how secure these phenoms are on the depth chart.

That's what this little exercise is all about. I'm pitting 32 of the most buzzed-about prospects against each other in a four-region bracket.

The definition of a prospect is a bit puzzling--every league and every list uses different criteria.

I'm using my long-time fantasy league's definition when picking prospect keepers -- no more than 200 total MLB at-bats for hitters and no more than 10 MLB appearances for pitchers.

That's why you won't see Neftali Feliz on this list. His 20 appearances don't even put him in this zip code.

We do have a couple guys that aren't getting prospect buzz because they had an extended cup of coffee last year. But Julio Borbon and Matt LaPorta both qualify here.

One other qualifier: My picks are purely based on how much players will help you THIS YEAR.

So is Stephen Strasburg a lock to take home our hardware? Not so fast, my friend.

Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Borbon and LaPorta all earned region No. 1 seeds. Alcides Escobar, Brian Matusz, Buster Posey and Eric Young Jr. were locked in at No. 2 seeds (though Posey and Young are the Villanovas of our bracket, with extremely generous seedings by the committee).

From there, the bracket was filled using 28 other of the most mentioned prospects among Yahoo, MLB, ESPN and CBS.

They were slotted into the brackets mostly at random using my pug Sophie to pick randomly numbered strips of Pupperoni.

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