This week's mailbag gets into success rates for top-five prospects, the Rangers' woeful offense, Byron Buxton's willingness to accept a trade, and possible CJ Abrams suitors.
Don asks:
Of the Mariners' top drafted-or-or-traded for hitting prospects, three have been outright failures (Dustin Ackley, Jarred Kelenic, Jésus Montero) and only two (A-Rod and Junior) lived up to expectations. Is the M's experience typical of other teams, or do the M's simply have bad vibes?
I guess what I'm asking is what's the success record for, say, the top five prospects each year?
Let's assess the likelihood of success for a Baseball America preseason top five prospect! For this mini-study, I decided to end with the year 2019. That way, we're capturing players who have mostly had their chance to make a Major League impact, particularly within their six-year control period.
There is subjectivity to this process, but a sample of around 50 different players feels appropriate. To reach that total, I had to look at the time period of 2007-19, since many players are ranked top five in multiple years. For what it's worth, Ackley fell outside this sample because he topped out at #11, while Kelenic was omitted because his highest prospect ranking in 2021 at #4.
Jesus Montero is on here, while Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. are not only because I didn't extend the study that far back.
My way of assessing this is to look at the player's FanGraphs WAR for his first six years of team control. Finding that window for each player requires some manual legwork, which is why I didn't make the sample larger. Check out my data here!
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Kelenic and Montero were not drafted by the Mariners. They were traded in from the Mets and Yankees, respectively.
The bust rate for top prospects in general is very high. For every Bryce Harper and Julio Rodriguez you’re going to get like 100 Dustin Ackleys and Forrest Whitleys.
I wish MLBTR had a one-article per week/month freebie. I’d definitely sample this article and see if it warrants $35 for a year’s worth.
My guess is Top 5 prospects aren’t overwhelmingly as successful as many might think.
Think of it as you’re paying to support the channel and anything additional is gravy. COVID, the last CBA, and changes Apple made to how they pay really hit sites like MLBTR hard.
I recommend. These mailbags are great and the other front office articles are top notch
RISP/High Leverage. A lot of this is a result of the pitching: if it is high leverage, the hitter is seeing a high leverage pitcher, other RISP situations may not warrant going with your best arm. And, in turn, it is luck of the draw: one cannot predict whether the bases will be loaded in a close game or with a five run lead. One would expect that these wide disparities would not exist over much larger sample sizes. Unless there really is something called “clutch.”