Here's a pinch hit from regular Batter's Box reader Will Rainey:

For my first effort at an original contribution to Da Box, I present for your consideration an overview of "the ones who got away." One of the spinoff benefits of Leigh Sprague's magnificent overview of the Jays trade history is the ability to examine that history from a variety of angles. One of those angles is the history of the involvement of "prospects" in these trades.

The cliched "common knowledge" understanding of trading prospects is that you are trading away future greatness for current reward. Baseball fans who pay attention to their team's minor league talent are often heard to moan about the great talent being traded away in an attempt to "rent a player." But does this turn out to be true?

It seemed profitable to me to see whatever happened to those players that the Jays' various GM's "sacrificed" in order to acquire major league talent. A possible corollary to this would be to examine what we got when we acquired “prospects,” but that is for another day.

Before I begin, I’d like to mention a few preliminary considerations. This report is dependent on Leigh's work, and owes its existence to it. However, it goes beyond that work in surveying the rest of the traded "prospects" career, as opposed to just what that player did for the receiving team, to see just what we lost. That said, I did not include statistics, as Leigh did, for these players' entire career for the sake of brevity. However, I tried, as much as possible, to confine my comments on those careers to the obvious facts rather than opinions, since I would be making no effort to support those opinions within the body of this report. Also, for the sake of consistency, those players commented on are those who never played any significant role as Toronto Blue Jays. They were either traded as minor leaguers, or with no more than a "cup of coffee" in a Jays uniform.

So, with that out of the way, let’s dig in . . .

Our first consideration, the Peter Bavasi years, are sort of a write off for this study. The only "prospect" I see that Bavasi traded (as might be expected from a newly formed team) is Mike Weathers who never played in the majors.

Pat Gillick's Record

• Dennis DeBarr: Never pitched in the majors again after leaving the Jays.
  
• Victor Cruz: Pitched pretty well for three years in middle relief, then disappeared. Injury?
  
• Ted Wilborn: Eight at bats, post Toronto.
  
• Charlie Puleo: hung around the league for parts of eight seasons, never winning more than 6 games in a season.
  
• Gil Kubski: got 63 pretty empty AB in 1980 and disappeared.
  
• Tom Dodd: Logged all of 13 AB in his major league career.
  
• Steve Senteney: Never appeared in the majors again.
  
• Augie Schmidt: Never played in the majors.
  
• Jack McKnight: Never played in the majors
  
• Ken Kinnard: Never played in the majors.
  
• David Shipanoff: Spent one year in the majors
  
• Jose Escobar: finally made the majors six years after the trade, for all of 15 AB.
  
• Matt Williams: pitched 26 innings, post Toronto
  
• Jeff Mays: Never played in the majors
  
• Greg Forlanda: Never played in the majors.
  
• Luis Aquino: Had a decent little nine year career in middle relief.
  
• Oswaldo Peraza: had one unimpressive season in the majors.
  
• Jose Mesa: The first guy traded out of the minors in the history of the Jays to have a long and productive career.
  
• Mike Brady: Never played in the majors
  
• Francisco Cabrera: Cabrera went on to spend 4 years in the Atlanta system as a marginally useful bench filler. Was out of the majors at 27 (if in fact that was his real age).
  
• Kevin Batiste: Never played in the majors after leaving Toronto.
  
• Pedro Munoz: Spent 6 years as a part time OF with the Twins with average results, and had a one season farewell tour with the A's. Was out of the majors for good by 28.
  
• Alex Sanchez: a special case since he returned to the Jays system, no impact for anyone.
  
• Ken Rivers: never played in the major leagues.
  
• Ron Blumberg: never played in the majors.
  
• Shawn Jeter: got only 13 major league AB
  
• Steve Wapnick: posted a total of 12 IP in the majors.
  
• William Suero: accumulated 30 AB in the majors.
  
• Rob Wishnevski: never played in the majors.
  
• Ryan Thompson: acquired over 1200 entirely mediocre AB over the course of nine seasons.
  
• Stoney Briggs: never played in the majors.
  
• Jose Herrera: 390 irrelevant AB for the A's and was out of the majors at the ripe old age of 24.
  
• Steve Karsay: Didn't really break through until he was 27 but has since had a nice little career.
  
• Domingo Martinez: never got an AB in the majors again.
  

The Beloved Gord Ash

• Peter Tucci: never played in the majors.
  
• Carlos Almanzar: continues to hang around the fringes of the major leagues as a AAAA talent.
  
• Beiker Graterol: logged all of 4 innings for his major league career.
  
• Pat Lynch: never played in the majors.
  
• Jorge Nunez: never played in the majors.
  
• Jim Mann: has accumulated 30 odd decent innings but is a fringe player at this point.
  
• Darwin Cubillan: fringe major leaguer with AAAA talent at best so far.
  
• Mike Young: Has turned into an excellent if underrated 2b for the Rangers. Definitely a significant loss in retrospect.
  
• John Sneed: never played in the majors.
  
• Brent Abernathy: a couple of mediocre seasons, now struggles to get back to the majors at all.
  
• Gary Glover: useful, if unspectacular, bullpen filler for the last three years.
  
• Clayton Andrews: never played in the majors
  
• Leo Estrella: bounced around minors before finally winning a spot in the majors in 2003. Nothing to write home to mother about so far.
  
• John Bale: fringe player so far.
  
• Mike Williams: never played in the majors.
  

J.P. Ricciardi's Short Record

• Mike Kremblas: never played in the majors.
  
• Chris Mowday: hasn't yet played in the majors
  
• Michael Rouse: hasn't yet played in the majors.
  

The Final Score

• 67 (Not counting Alex Sanchez) such players were dealt the 26 year history of the Jays.
  
  • 1 by Bavasi
    
  • 33 by Gillick
    
  • 30 by Ash
    
  • 3 by J.P.
  
  
• 30 of these never appeared in the majors after leaving the Jays system.
  
  • 1 by Bavasi
    
  • 14 by Gillick
    
  • 12 by Ash
    
  • 3 by J.P.
  
  
• 13 had no more than a couple of cups of coffee as major leaguers (less than 100 Ab or 50 IP).
  
• 7 were out of the league within three years
  
• 7 had extended, though ordinary, careers which are now over.
  
• 10 others are still active major leaguers with relatively assured roles in the majors this season, not all of whom are significant players.
  
• In sum total, out of 67 players who departed the Jays minor league system in their entire history only 17 had any extended major league career, and only three significant major league careers have resulted:
  
  • Jose Mesa
    
  • Steve Karsay
    
  • Mike Young

Finally to be fair and complete, the Jays have traded a number of players who were in the infancy of their major league careers who can be loosely considered "prospects." These include: Pete Vuckovich, Phil Huffman, Mauro Gozzo, Willie Blair, Denis Boucher, Jeff Kent, Paul Menhart, Edwin Hurtardo, Cesar Izturus, Felipe Lopez, and Mark Hendrickson, of whom four are still active on major league rosters. Only two of those (three if Lopez lives up to his clippings some day) were in any way significant major leaguers: Vuckovich and Kent.

So the question before the house is this:

Is the conventional wisdom about trading away future stardom when you deal minor leaguers completely false? Or have the Jays simply been incredibly lucky to have traded 78 such players and have lost only 5 important players, and only one real star player?

Further how does this record inform future decisions in regards to trading minor leaguers for major league help?