Top prospect lists always catch my attention. Over the past few months I have seen lists from Baseball America, John Sickels, and yesterday Baseball Prospectus. I always check the lists to see how Blue Jay prospects rate and wonder if the Jays, as an organization, have a strong system. However my excitement is tempered by the knowledge that these lists, and organization rankings, have little meaning from a major league perspective. No matter how many "names" your team has on a list there are no guarantees. Many of us are excited with the thought of Alexis Rios, Guillermo Quiroz, Dustin McGowan and Gabe Gross becoming Blue Jay regulars by 2005. But then reality hits me upside the head saying "nothing is sure", and the realization that, on average, one or two of them will crash and burn.


Some organizations have weak farm systems, but they have one or two players who turn into major league stars. Other organizations are strong, but they have a run of bad luck and have their prospects fade when they get to the major leagues. I know that drafted players are a gamble, but how much of a gamble are top prospects lists? Baseball America publishes an annual top 100 prospects list. If the Jays have six players on BA's top 100 prospects list should I be excited? 100 prospects over thirty teams is an average of 3.3 per team. So if the Jays have six players listed, how many of these prospects should make it? I decided to check how sure is it that a top 100 prospect will make it. Before I started I guessed that half of them would make it. What do you think?

I took the BA top 100 list from 2000, and checked the stats for all players in 2003. I divided the players into five categories:

S - All-Stars
R - Regulars
U - Utility major league players
P - Part time, meaning some time in the majors and some in minors
O - Not in the major leagues, either out of baseball or still stuck in the minors.

Here is the split:

 S   R   U   P   O  Total
11  31  15  15  28  100

42% of the prospects are major league all-stars or regulars. Major names among the all-stars are Vernon Wells, Rafael Furcal, Alfonso Soriano, Eric Gagne, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito. Some of the best known busts are the two top pitching prospects, Rick Ankiel (#1) and Ryan Anderson (#9). Others are Josh Hamilton (#13), Drew Henson (#24), Chad Hermanson, signed by the Blue Jay's to a minor league deal (#33), and Wilson Betemit (#99).

I then looked to see if there is a difference between pitchers and hitters. I know drafted pitchers are more risky than hitters but what about top prospects. The numbers:

Type     S   R   U   P   O  Total
Hitters  7  15  11  11  14  58
Pitchers 4  16   4   4  14  42

Pitchers on the top prospect lists are just as likely to be regulars, within the limited scope of my review. Twenty two hitters, or 38%, are stars or regulars. 48% of pitchers are stars or regulars. However more hitters make it to "the show" and hang around as utility guys. More pitchers never make it. One third of the top 100 pitching prospects from 2000 did not appear in the major leagues in 2003.

I then looked at the distribution of stars and regulars by quartile. I would think that the top 25 prospects would be more successful than the prospects from 76 to 100.

Quart   S  R  U  P  O  Total
All-Q1  4  9  5  1  6  25
All-Q2  3  6  3  7  6  25
All-Q3  3  8  2  7  5  25
All-Q4  1  8  5  0 11  25
-----------------------
Quart   S  R  U  P  O  Total
Hit-Q1  3  5  4  0  3  15
Hit-Q2  1  1  2  6  4  14
Hit-Q3  2  3  0  5  1  11
Hit-Q4  1  6  5  0  6  18
-----------------------
Quart   S  R  U  P  O  Total
Pit-Q1  1  4  1  1  3  10
Pit-Q2  2  5  1  1  2  11
Pit-Q3  1  5  2  2  4  14
Pit-Q4  0  2  0  0  5   7

A prospects position on the list is not very significant. The first quartile (#1-25) was the most productive but not by a significant margin. The fourth quartile provided seven all-star or regular hitters. The second quartile produced two. Now I did not look at quality so the bottom quartile hitters include Ramon Santiago, Luis Rivas, Joe Crede, and Hee Seop Choi. Similarly for pitchers, the second quartile was more productive than the first.

Admittedly this is a small sample. However the findings are not unexpected. More than half of the top 100 prospects will not become major league regulars. There is no logic that I can see to determine who will make it and who will not. Some of the most highly rated prospects never were successful in the major leagues, some only marginally successful. If I look at other years I see names such as Ben Grieve who was the #1 prospect in 1998. He has not lived up to that ranking. Bruce Chen, who is in the Jays camp, was #4 in 1999. Matt White and Reuben Rivera made two appearances in the top ten. As a side note, Vernon Wells was #69 in 1999, then jumped to #4 in 2000, but dropped to #12 in 2001.

So what does this mean for the Jays? We should expect that only two of the Jays top 4 prospects (Rios; Quiroz; McGowan; Gross) will make it as regulars. If three make it we should be ecstatic. In 2004 at least one of these prospects will likely struggle at their next level.

Of the Blue Jays top ten prospects, the law of averages suggest four will make it, five would be good, three would be bad. Over the course of 2004 half of the top ten prospects will likely stall or regress. Look at the 2003 BA top ten list for the Jays. Only Rios, McGowan, League and Cash really justified their rankings. Adams could be considered to have moved up slightly or to have stalled, depending on your perspective. Rosario (injured), and Griffin definitely stalled, while Werth, Arnold, and Chulk dropped in the rankings. This is about average.

So remember prospect lists and organizational rankings are interesting. But less than half of the players will make it in the big leagues. But when we are looking for three or four players from the top ten to make it, one or two above or below the expectations can make the GM a hero, or a zero.