last year's rookies, kickoff

Although we didn't do the rankings of 2008 rookies until January and February of 2009, that was mostly because I didn't decide to do this project until then.  It actually seems like a better idea to do it now, while the season is fresh in our minds and before kicking off the community prospect lists.

As you may recall, the project is to rate last year's rookies as prospects, based on their likely future major league performance. In particular, we are choosing from the 149 players (95 pitchers, 54 hitters) who lost their rookie status for 2010 as a result of their 2009 major league performance.  109 of these players did it the straightforward way, by accumulating more than 130 at bats or 50 ininings last year, another 40 did it based on time on the roster or based on combining their at bats or innings pitched from other years with 2009. 

Going back to last year's community prospect list, 7 of the top 10 are no longer rookies (Heyward, Bumgarner and Feliz all have pretty good excuses),  6 of the next 10 used up their rookies status.  From there it slows down considerably with only 19 more making it for a sufficient length to the majors from the remaining 130 on the list.  Of course that means that more than 75% of the 2009 rookie class is composed of players who weren't even seen as being among the top 150 prospects going into last year.  While in many instances these unknown rookies are role players without any chance of long term impact there are certainly cases where players unknow last year could crack the top 25 this year.

Nonetheless, by definition the very top players are going to be those that we thought were the best going into last year and thier performance last year confirmed that they are every bit as good as we expected.  My thoughts for who should be on the first list of players from whom we will choose the very top prospect, based on this approach, are: Wieters, Price, McCutchen, Porcello, Brett Anderson, Hanson, Beckham and Andrus, all of whom were in the top 25 going into last year (except Beckham who was #47) and all of whom performed at a level at which the positives far outweighed the negatives.

As you know, if I put this list up a couple of guys will get little support, and be dropped for a few rounds giving a chance to add others.  By round 4 as many 6-9 new guys should get a chance to be considered.  So, here is my question.  Are there any players not on the list immediately above, who lost their rookie status last year and who you would likely vote for in the top 3 spots for their future ability?  Let me know below and if there is enough support for someone I'll add him to the first list.  I expect to crank out the post for the #1 prospect among last year's rookies in the next day or two.  But, please stick to the criteria of a likely vote in the top 3 as if you wouldn't do that there is plenty of tiem to suggest they be added after we kick things off.

In thinking about this question, it might help for me to supply the names of the players in the top 25 on last year's prospect list who lost their rookie status last year, but I was planing on skipping for a round or two: Snider, Rasmus, Maybin, Cahill, Laporta, Fowler, Holland, Tillman.  Coghlan and Niemann are a couple of very strong rookie of the year candidates who you might want to see added to the first list, and there are certainly arguments to be made for still others.

Thanks for your input, I'm really looking forward to getting this started.