“Can’t Miss” = 23%?

Baseball America has posted their top 100 prospects lists from 1990-2007 on their website. That made me wonder, how many of these guys actually made it in the major leagues? If there are 100 prospects on the list, that means roughly the top 3 prospects from each team, though of course it varies year by year. These guys are often considered “can’t miss” prospects, and yet they often do.

The tricky part is, what do you consider “making it”? Is it enough if they have one dominant season? Or should they reach some career numbers to justify that title? I’ll try to classify these guys into some general classes, based on the following criteria:

A = Superstar (Albert Pujols, Johan Santana, Francisco Rodriguez). This type of player develops into a dominant pitcher or hitter for at least two years, with good career numbers for the years he played. Often receives All-Star recognition or other awards.
B = Good big leaguer (Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Bob Wickman). This type of player develops into a regular, and posts above-average seasons, with possibly one very good year in there.
C = Average big leaguer (Jacque Jones, Ted Lilly, Joe Borowski). This player posts numbers around the league average and is a consistent player, though he probably never receives a huge contract.
D = Reserve (Tony Graffanino, Darren Oliver). This player might be a journeyman who never really sticks with one team or one role. Typically has a fairly short career.
F = Never made it to the majors. They might get a cup of coffee here and there, but won’t stick.
I = Incomplete due to injury or not yet established at the big league level.

If you break down according to these categories, you see this trend from the 2002 propects (five years should be enough to break out, right?):

A 9%; B 14%; C 20%; D 29%; F 25%; I 3%

So even if your prospect is on the top 100 list, there’s only about a 9% chance that you have a superstar on your hands, and only 23% you even have a player who will be well above average. Real GMs and fantasy GMs would do well to keep this in mind when trading away an established player for young talent.

Well, you might argue, top 100 is not very selective. How about the top 10 from each year? Let’s start from 2005 and go back 10 years, to have 100 players (a few are duplicates, of course). The numbers are better, but for 85 unique players during that time:

A 15.3%; B 27.1%; C 24.7%; D 18.8%; F 5.9%; I 8.2%

This can still change, as 7 players have yet to make their mark on the league, but it’s disturbing to know that 1 out of 4 top 10 prospects will turn out to have average baseball careers, and another almost 19% will be career backups, 5th starters or journeymen. About 6% never even play in the bigs. Scary.