1. Introduction: Background & Motivation

What is a prospect? Why do some succeed and others fail? Are there observable differences between types of young players that lead each down different paths? What role do age, position, ability to draw walks, etc., play? How many current top players were highly regarded as prospects? How many developed into stars despite lack of top prospect status? (Hint: eight of the nine most productive big-league hitters from our sample were assigned the grade of A or A- as prospects in 1996; on the other hand, 6 of the top 25 were given a grade of C+ or lower.)

These are some of the questions I asked myself when I first put this study together back in 2002. As I said at the time, “The general idea of the study was to examine how well former prospects had fared in the big leagues, using John Sickels’ 1996 Minor League Scouting Notebook for the data sample and Bill James’ win shares for measuring the success (or lack thereof) of each player.”

So I went through Sickels’ book and compiled minor- and major-league stats on all 515 players listed. Win shares were all the rage at the time, and they seemed like a good candidate for helping to evaluate what I hoped to evaluate, so I added those in as well.

I looked at prospects who had been graded similarly but whose big league careers diverged considerably. I looked at prospects who had been graded very differently but who somehow ended up arriving at similar points in the big leagues. I looked at guys who according to their statistical record in the minors should have had superior big league careers and wondered why that hadn’t happened and what the limitations might be on evaluating prospects solely on the basis of their minor league performance. I looked at the difference between pitchers and position players, between left fielders and shortstops. Basically I asked a lot of questions and looked at a lot of things.

Speaking of questions, you may be asking yourself, “Why revisit this three years later? Why not just forget about it and move onto something else. Seriously, get a life already.” Point taken. But here’s the deal: A lot can change in three years. For instance, entering 2002, Brendan Donnelly had zero big league innings under his belt. But at age 30 he finally reached the Show and became a terrific setup reliever. A pitcher with a grade of C- in Sickels’ book, he’s barely a blip on the radar in the initial study. This time around, however, he’s a guy with 165+ innings and a 2.12 ERA.

There are plenty of other examples like this, but Donnelly is my favorite because he was such an underdog. The point is, things change and it’s good to take another look and make sure what we thought we learned back then still holds and that we didn’t miss anything else in the process.

That, and it’s fun.

One final note: I’m not a statistician, nor do I play one on television. You won’t see regressions, confidence intervals, or anything like that here. I mainly count stuff. If anyone with more sophisticated knowledge and skills would like to take up the cause and do something more exotic with this, please drop me a line. And if you’re interested in checking out the original study, it’s on pp. 4-19 of Ducksnorts: Best of 2003, which you can download at the old site.

Otherwise, join us each Thursday throughout the baseball season as we revisit the prospects of 1996.