The History of the #1 Prospect....Do they Live up to the Hype????

First off, you’re comparing Jay Bruce to other guys based on a 1.5 season sample size. That’s not nearly enough to say that he’s not at the same level.

Secondly, I’m not sure of the criteria that you’re basing these evaluations on, but some of them just seem off. Josh Beckett isn’t on the same level as Cabrera and Reyes? Okay, maybe he doesn’t have the same name recognition, but Reyes isn’t scarily good, and Beckett has proven himself as an ace in the past. I think he’s certainly in the discussion with those two.

And J.D. Drew… he’s lost a lot of time to injury, but he’s been really productive throughout his career. The guy has a better OPS+ than Beltran, and one that’s only slightly worse than Berkman. Again, he’s not the best of the class, but he’s in the conversation.

And Andruw Jones… It’s certainly easy to only remember the last season or two, but Jones was a really productive outfielder for nearly a decade, both offensively and defensively. Even looking beyond his consistent ~115 OPS+, Jones was one of the best center fielders in the game for years.

And Cliff Floyd? He was never the best in the game, you’re right, but he was great for a few seasons there…

I guess I’m just struggling to see your point. It’s like the poll someone made a couple weeks ago: Would you rather bet on Strasburg, or the field? You’re going to take the field every time. But that doesn’t change the fact that the #1 prospect is the most likely on the list to be the best on the list, and the majority of the #1 prospects you listed are at least in the conversations.

But essentially we’re accomplishing very little
How does a prospect really get to be rated #1 ?

Also, some years have a greater talent pool than others, while the elite talent is always there every year, the depth of those top players differs annually sometimes…

Let me ask you this KBR.. Would you rather have Arodis Chapman right now on your K.C. Royals for 4.5 Million for 6 years….
OR
would you rather have Stephen Strasburg on your same K.C. Royals at 11-12 Million for 6 years ?

its all about perspective.

you don’t rank a guy lower because people ranked at his deserved spot might not have as good of a turn out rate. You rank a guy #1 because he is #1

20 years of prospects, best performers, and rankings must have taken some real time and It’s nice to see a well thought out and researched post on it. This seems to be a follow- up, side bar to your Top 25 post. I have a feeling you may have a few more things to say as side posts on that also. It must be very satisfying to have as many comments on that post as there have been.

The people who like to write carry this site for me, however only some are effective and most could do better.

1)They need to come up with good ideas to write about that people will care about
2)They need to put the time in, do the research, present the case, back it up
3)They need to actually be a good writer, grammar counts, beginnings and endings count.

And last, they must be capable at looking at what they wrote from multiple angles, not only stating the pro’s of their premise, but all the con’s they can think of as well. and playing devil’s advocate to there own ideas so the con’s can be thought out and refuted before even being brought up.

The really good thinkers would benefit their posts the most, if they spent as much time or more doing the writing and analysis, as the time they use doing the research on the names and stats.

1) The science/art/augury of prospecting looks very different these days, as compared to 1991. We have much more information and much better metrics of evaluation than BA was using back then. I don’t think you should expect as much accuracy from older lists.

2) The premise here makes no sense. Of course the top prospect doesn’t always pan out; he is still a prospect.

Just because Ace-Ace will many times get beaten by Ace-King doesn’t change which is the better hand.

But you don’t actually believe that the big issue people had with your top 25 was the fact that Heyward wasn’t listed as #1, do you?

You created a post to defend a different post about a top prospect list that people disagreed on your rankings? They could awaken Ted Williams frozen head for him to come up with the “Ted Williams top 40 list. Sponsored by Alcor Life Extension Foundation” and people would disagree with it.

Equally as impressive are your response times to other peoples comments.

I think the list you provided for BA shows how good they are at ranking the top players. Don’t they take a mean average of all of the writers rankings to correlate the list? Bottom line is that they do a pretty good job of nailing the top guys, just like you did a nice job of putting a list together of the obvious top prospects.

i kinda hand-picked crawford for that reason haha… i’m sure there’s a better comp if i sat down and looked

I don’t really like the premise of this post.

First, I think the difference between the prospect and prospect who ended up preforming the best, at the time of the ranking were relatively small. I only want to go back to 2000, because I think it is a better representation of the way our current prospect world works, rather than all 25 years.

All of the best performances that you chose, while subjective, were ranked extremely high. There were people who, outside of 2006, ranked most of those players near the top, or at the top.

Most of the best performers were considered untouchable by their respective teams. I don’t think say, the Dodgers would have traded Kershaw for Bruce or vice versa.

Later next week, I am going to try and compile the career WAR for each prospect ranked 1-10 over the last 10 years and see what that tells us.