Fool's Gold Crappy Substitute For Real Kind

As those weirdos across the pond say, Happy Christmas. Accept this early bounty of gifts, in the form of links, from your friends at OBnB. While the Yanks ponder offering a long-term deal to Danny Almonte, us fans of mere mortal (okay, incompetent) franchises are left to review lists of mythical prospects that we may or may not ever actually see on the television.

Okay, so I'm a little bit bitter about the Mark Texeira deal. (So is this guy, and he actually matters.)

The good news is that there are a couple of nice recently published breakdowns of the Giants minor league system.

Alex Eisenberg at Baseball-Intellect has a Giants top 15 prospect list, found here and here, that includes fantastic videos of the team's top prospects.

Meanwhile, the great John Sickels at Minor League Ball released his top 20 Giants prospects list this morning, complete with the snarkiness of SportsNation commenters.

And speaking of SportsNation, the fans continue to rank the prospects at McCovey Chronicles. They're all the way down to 22, but it looks like those crazed McCoven are going to keep voting until they get to J.R. Phillips.

Go ahead and enjoy those. I think I'm going to go start a Manny Ramirez rumor.

(By the way, Giants propagandist Chris Haft posits that the logjam the Teixeira signing creates in the Yanks lineup may bear some dredges in a trade possibility.)