After looking at some great leaps forward yesterday, let’s flip the coin and look at ten Top 100 Prospects who have failed to live up to expectations-and in some cases, haven’t even come close.
Yonder Alonso, 1B, Reds (Pre-season ranking: 35)
When the Reds selected Alonso in last year’s draft, the confusion didn’t revolve around why they liked him as much as why they liked him better than Justin Smoak. While Smoak is on the verge of making it to the big leagues, Alonso got off to a good start in the Florida State League, but he scuffled at Double-A while showing well below the kind of power that was expected. Concerns about his ability to hit left-handers also remain; while the sample size is small, he’s 9-for-43 against southpaws without a home run. He’ll get little chance to make improvements from there, as a broken hamate bone could cost him the remainder of the season.
Pedro Alvarez, 3B, Pirates (Pre-season ranking: 4)
His disappointing junior year was written off as the result of a broken hand, but what excuses do we have now? Batting .240/.322/.479 across two levels, Alvarez has certainly shown off his tremendous raw power, but it’s come at the price of 87 strikeouts in 288 at-bats, and scouting reports that say he’ll need to move across the diamond to first base sooner rather than later.
Lars Anderson, 1B, Red Sox (Pre-season ranking: 17)
Entering the year as the top prospect in the Red Sox system, Anderson was seen as on the verge of something special, with a possible September callup. Even more disturbing than his .262/.356/.407 line that includes just eight home runs in 275 at-bats are consistent scouting reports from multiple sources that now project him as no more than a second-division starter in the big leagues.
Engel Beltre, OF, Rangers (Pre-season ranking: 68)
All the tools in the world and an assignment to the high-octane California League looked like the perfect formula for a breakout, but nothing has gone in the right direction for him. Beltre’s swing-at-anything approach has led to more advanced pitching simply giving him nothing to hit, thus the miserable batting line .220/.271/.302.
Eric Hosmer, 1B, Royals (Pre-season ranking: 18)
Yes, adjusting the pro ball is a difficult thing, but when you get a $6 million bonus, immediate production is expected. The awaited second-half surge just doesn’t seem to be taking form, as one of the best high school power hitters scouts had seen in years has just four bombs in 251 at-bats and an overall line of .251/.352/.378. Some scouts suggest that he needs to adjust his position in the batters’ box, as he’s so far away from the plate that it’s affecting his ability to hit anything out of his wheelhouse.
Jeremy Jeffress, RHP, Brewers (Pre-season ranking: 72)
You don’t need more than one hand to count the number of pitchers who can match the kind of numbers Jeffress can put up on a radar gun, but he began the year with a profound inability to throw strikes, and just when it seemed like he was making progress back in the Florida State League, his inability to stay away from smoking marijuana cost him a 100-game suspension that will take him well into the 2010 season. It is a sad and stupid waste of talent.
Kellen Kulbacki, OF, Padres (Pre-season ranking: 84)
On a pure numbers level, Kulbacki was arguably the best hitter in the minors during the second half of 2008, but a slow recovery from shoulder surgery cost him the first month of the 2009 season, and he’s been out since the end of June with a hamstring injury. Even more of a matter of concern was his .201/.257/.254 line in 36 games for Double-A San Antonio, making last year look more and more like your classic Cal League mirage.
Michael Main, RHP, Rangers (Pre-season ranking: 66)
A 2007 first-round pick, Main missed much of the 2008 season due to a cracked rib, but he showed tons of potential in his brief return, and as one of the most athletic pitchers in the minors, he oozed projection. A 7.33 ERA at High-A Bakersfield was already greatly disappointing, but then he went down with a mysterious ailment that including exhaustion among other symptoms that doctors have not been able to fully diagnose; there is no timetable for his return.
Mike Moustakas, 3B, Royals (Pre-season ranking: 21)
After a slow start to his pro career, Moustakas was the best hitter in the Midwest League over the last few months of the 2008 season, and seemed poised for big things, but his season at High-A Wilmington has been anything but big. With only one home run in his last 41 games, he’s now batting just .263/.302/.415 on the year, and his defense at third base has received some rough reviews.
Kyle Skipworth, C, Marlins (Pre-season ranking: 82)
The most worrying thing about Skipworth’s .201/.259/.328 line at Single-A Greensboro is the fact that the Marlins drafted him with the sixth overall pick last year as a guy with a reputation for being an offense-oriented catcher. He’s clearly not that, and he’s made seven errors, been charged with 10 passed balls, and thrown out fewer than 20 percent of opposing basestealers, proving that his defense still needs a ton of work as well.
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Which of the players on this list do you think has the best shot to turn it around in the second half and end up the year at the same level they started at? Obviously not Alonso, Jeffress, or Main, but it seems to that if all Hosmer needs is a new batting stance, he could take off in the second half. Or is retooling a batting stance too tough to do in-season? Also, it looks like Alvarez and, to a lesser extent, Moustakas are at least showing good power, so I could see them improving their batting eye and contact skills as the season wears on and ending up the year with pretty good numbers.
Alonso, Alvarez, Hosmer, and Skipworth all made top-100 status before they even played in an actual pro league. Really the only guy on this list who would have made a BP list back in the old "we scoff at the scouts" days is Lars Anderson.
I realize it's hard to leave the ballyhooed prospects off the list and risk looking dumb when someone goes celestial, and you are the only guy who didn't have him on your list. But maybe it's time to go back to the numbers, and let Baseball America feed us the scouting community's consensus.
Besides, BA's half full of crap anyway. What they "do well" is apparently invite beat writers who have no clue to write up top 10 lists.
BP is not the best at scouting, but they're likely the best at an integrated scouting-and-stats framework, which is, you know, better than one or the other. The question is not whether BP makes mistakes, but whether they make MORE mistakes by including scouting reports or not. Your confirmation bias is causing you to ignore the overwhelming amount of information contained in scouting reports, even if they're not the best scouting reports ever.
Now as to Strasburg, a singular talent, and the exception that proves the rule. What is the rush to get this guy onto a prospect list? Is it some level of fear that the player is going to skip the minors entirely?
Realistically, if the player signs and plays this year, then he will have a track record that can be evaluated. If he doesn't sign in time, and instead debuts in 2010, won't he be very unlikely to make the majors that same year anyway?
There will be plenty of time for Strasburg to prove his mettle before we try to shoehorn him onto some prospect list.
Meantime, we have the existing prospect list, and again, most of the guys who fell on their faces are the guys who were ranked based on secondhand reports rather than on their track record.
Sorry if you find that fact objectionable.
Read this article. If you want BP (or pretty much any other entity) to stick to their main "focus" and never evolve or grow, well, I guess I just don't know what to tell you.
Will said, "I'd like to see Delmon Young slightly lower. There's a chance--however small--that he's not as good as everyone thinks. If we make him Top 10 on potential alone and he fails, that reflects on us."
Joe said, "We're. Not. Scouts. We're performance analysts, which means we have virtually no credible information to use in ranking Young.
Of course, things have changed at BP since 2004, and, though KG isn't a scout, he talks to them, as do other writers and the approach to prospect evaluation at BP has changed to reflect the additional information available.
Now, given how Young turned out, you might think this is an argument for going back to the old ways. But, given that Joe was pushing for Jeremy Reed to be #1 that year and a lot of the writers were highly skeptical of Mauer being rated too high because he was too tall for a catcher and Andy Marte was getting a lot of love, I don't think that conclusion is all that obvious.
However the number of people who have contacts inside the industry is small. That's the kind of information I'm looking for and that's why I pay for BP. I appreciate BA because they have a larger staff dedicated to prospecting but some of it hard to sort out. You are listening to different people with varying interpretations of what they have heard. I agree with someone else said, the Top 10s by guys from your local paper make this even worse.
What KG brings as opposed to BA is a singular voice. If he likes, doesn't like someone I know why. BA is a consensus of a consensus and sometimes the "why" gets lost.
I know it is way to early to give up on these guys, but the difference between what Hosmer and Skipworth have done so far and what Matusz, Posey, G. Beckham, and Smoak have done so far is pretty monumental.
He's already nearing 100 IP; will the A's shut him down or move him to the bullpen at some point in the second half?
on the horizon, Check out a kid named Miguel de Los Santos, a 20 year old lefty in the Dominican Summer League who has 46 strikeouts in 19 and a third innings. Though he's walked 12 and hit 3, he's allowed a whopping 2 hits. that's an opposing batting average of .031 and an opposing OBP of .215