In the year 2008....

The folks at Project Prospect have an early top-five prospects list for the Giants here. This tempts me to slap together a half-warmed top-five list of my own. Heck, I could regurgitate ten names if you need me to. Fifteen! Twenty! And each list will be just as devoid of useful analysis as the last one!

edit: Rereading this, I noticed that it might have seemed like I was poking fun at Project Prospect. I was not. I was just making fun of my own lack of prospect knowledge.

Nah. I'll save that for the post-Winter Meetings decompression. Instead, here's a list of how the top-ten list would look at the end of 2008 in some magical best-case scenario of prospect-watching:

1. Angel Villalona
   
2. Wendell Fairley
   
3. Emmanuel Burriss
   
4. Tim Alderson
   
5. Madison Bumgarner
   
6. Nick Noonan
   
7. John Bowker
   
8. Henry Sosa
   
9. Clayton Tanner
   
10. Travis Denker

Remember: This isn't a top-ten list now, but a hypothetical list filled with wild hopes and as-yet unjustified optimism for the future. It's a list that would bode very well for the organization's future, but one that isn't too far-fetched. The list assumes Emmanuel Burriss has a breakout so huge, he's able to vault over two first-round picks. It assumes that John Bowker retains the progress he made in Connecticut, and that Villalona takes the steps you would expect from a bonus baby. There's also a Travis Denker sighting, even if only to annoy the Dodgers.

So if you could concoct a realistic, best-case, top-prospects list for the 2008 offseason, what would it be?