Velocity on its own doesn’t make someone a top prospect, as some recent examples in our own system would bear out. I assume there are concerns with command/control and/or secondaries or they would have protected him.
For sure true. Still, I think you get about 40 guys on your AAA roster. (Maybe not that many, I don't remember). So between 40-man big-league and hypothetically 40-man AAA roster, you could hypothetically protect your most intriguing 80 players who are draft eligible. If it's 80, you might not have 80 draft-eligible guys more compelling than a 97-mph lefty who's still only 20.