hence the "dernell stenson award" given every year in the afl....the story comes up -- you know -- annually.

well played, sir.  well played indeed.

how about 2003?

 - rocco baldelli #2.  more of a 2 or 3 or 6 hitter.
 - jose reyes #3.  good.
 - brandon phillips #7.  ?
 - hanley #19.  check.
 - bj upton #21.  oh man.
 - choo #61.
 - marlon byrd #63.

i don't know, are the burner prospects flaming out
so bad that i don't even know their names any more? #82, todd linden, giants?  i'm not even sure i remember who that is.  my feeling is he wasn't a leadoff hitter but i'm not positive.  #100, nic jackson, OF, cubs?  never heard of him.  was he fast?  

.....Hanley's not exactly the type of guy I'm calling a "leadoff prospect." I mean, Baseball America just talks about how hard the ball comes off his bat, while I just read Luciani's old projection of him to hit 20-25 HRs annually. He hit 17 HRs this year, as a 22-year-old. Even if he is a "lead-off prospect," by virtue of his speed, I think the projection rules of power prospects apply to a guy like this.

Jeremy Reed is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, but it's obviously extremely unfair to limit examples to those who fail and then say "see -- everyone failed!."

I don't think Milledge counts (doesn't he have lots of projected power?). I wouldn't put Barfield either, for the same reasons you don't want to.

Aybar and Gathright will be more interesting questions, but, for my money, they'll both fail (not really putting myself out on a limb with Gathright, I know).

....how many of these guys were leadoff PROSPECTS? Because the question is, do people who are labeled "top leadoff prospects" succeed? Or are we extremely poor at telling who will indeed make it and who won't in terms of top-of-the-order talent (more specifically, prospects who fit the Ellsbury/Caruso/Tyner/Thurston/et al mold, rather than an "alternative" leadoff prospect who has a skillset associated with other types of prospects who we AGREE can be somewhat accurately identified)?

As I count it (and tell me if I missed the hype about these guys at the time), only Castillo, Kendall, Giles, Youkilis, Rollins, Granderson and Vizquel were prospects.

Now, of those players, Giles, Rollins and Granderson don't fit the mold of the type of prospect I was talking about since they all drive the ball/have power.

Kendall doesn't fit the mold in the slightest -- besides batting leadoff (NOW, though he was a middle-of-the-order hitter in his heyday), he couldn't have less in common with Jacoby Ellsbury and Jason Tyner. Same with Youkilis.

This leaves Castillo and Vizquel. To me (and as you allude to), Vizquel was not this type of player either as a prospect, or in his first 10 years in the league. Through age 31, he was a defense-first shortstop who hit enough to survive. He has since morphed into a better hitter. I wouldn't say he's EXACTLY of the same mold now, either (less speedy), but that's just academic, since he really WASN'T this type of "prospect" at the time (circa '88).

I will certainly give you Luis Castillo, though. He was the 79th best prospect in baseball on the 1996 BA top 100, and I'd definitely heard of him at thought decently of him at the time.

Still, I'm hardly overwhelmed. It still seems like leadoff hitters are as likely (if not much, much more) to be failed middle-of-the-order prospects with either speed or a good batting eye, or simply nobodies who kept on getting on base and stealing until they found themselves entrenched in the big-league lineup, than it is likely they are the "top" leadoff prospects in the game, who seem to end up busting almost without fail. I don't think the same came be said of most other types of prospects (besides middle-relief, I guess, but that's different in so many ways).