Hitting The Cutoff Man

Last night I watched as the Braves' Jason Heyward smacked a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game against the Phillies. A couple of days before, I watched as Heyward -- with two outs and two strikes and the Braves trailing by one -- hit an opposite-field single against a left-handed pitcher to score two and win the game.

It's getting awfully difficult to keep the Heyward Hype Machine from overheating.

The thing about Heyward is -- if he does turn out to be a great player, it will surprise nobody. He's been a big-time prospect for a long while, and this year was Baseball America's No. 1 prospect, a spot ahead of fellow phenom Stephen Strasburg.

That brought this thought to mind: What kind of prospects go on to be most successful? I'll leave a more serious study of the subject to someone else, but what I decided to do was take Baseball America's annual top 100 prospects lists (which go back to 1990) and divide them into top 10 players, top 100 players and unranked players.

Then I created a team out of each group. Each player is listed with the highest ranking they achieved on the list, as many were on there in multiple seasons.

     Team 'Top Ten'               Team 'Top 100'               Team 'Unranked'
C    Joe Mauer ('04-'05, #1)      Brian McCann ('05, #44)      Yadier Molina

1B   Mark Teixeira ('03, #1)      Albert Pujols ('01, #42)     Pablo Sandoval

2B   Brandon Phillips ('03, #7)   Chase Utley ('03, #81)       Ben Zobrist

3B   Alex Rodriguez ('95, #1)     Ryan Zimmerman ('06, #15)    Kevin Youkilis

SS   Hanley Ramirez ('05, #10)    Troy Tulowitzki ('07, #15)   Yunel Escobar

LF   Justin Upton ('07, #9)       Carl Crawford ('02, #59)     Matt Holliday

CF   Grady Sizemore ('04, #9)     Matt Kemp ('06, #96)         Denard Span

RF   Ichiro Suzuki ('01, #9)      Ryan Braun ('07, #26)        Nelson Cruz

DH   Prince Fielder ('04, #10)    Miguel Cabrera ('03, #12)    Mark Reynolds



C    Matt Wieters ('09, #1)       Victor Martinez ('03, #16)   Jorge Posada

MI   Derek Jeter ('95, #4)        Ian Kinsler ('05, #98)       Chone Figgins

CI   Evan Longoria ('08, #2)      Adrian Gonzalez ('03, #31)   Jorge Cantu

OF   Jason Heyward ('10, #1)      Shin-Soo Choo ('05, #51)     Michael Bourn

OF   B.J. Upton ('04, #2)         Jayson Werth ('00, #48)      Shane Victorino



SP   Felix Hernandez ('05, #2)    Tim Lincecum ('07, #11)      Dan Haren

SP   Justin Verlander ('06, #8)   Roy Halladay ('99, #12)      John Lackey

SP   CC Sabathia ('01, #7)        Zack Greinke ('04, #14)      Ricky Nolasco

SP   Josh Beckett ('02, #1)       Chris Carpenter ('97, #28)   Brandon Webb

SP   Tommy Hanson ('09, #4)       Adam Wainwright ('03, #18)   James Shields

SP   Clayton Kershaw ('08, #7)    Cliff Lee ('03, #30)         Scott Baker

SP   Matt Cain ('06, #10)         Josh Johnson ('06, #80)      Wandy Rodriguez

SP   Brett Anderson ('09, #7)     Ubaldo Jimenez ('05, #82)    Ryan Dempster

SP   Chad Billingsley ('06, #7)   Javier Vazquez ('98, #83)    Jorge de la Rosa



SU   Neftali Feliz ('10, #9)      Jonathan Papelbon ('06, #37) Joe Nathan

CL   Fran. Rodriguez ('03, #10)   Jonathan Broxton ('06, #63)  Mariano Rivera

I only included a couple of relievers because there aren't a whole lot of top prospects that become elite relievers.

Anyways, I think you can see a couple of things here. First, while Team 'Unranked' is quite good, there is a noticeable gap between it and the other two teams. So although we can safely say that Baseball America misses some good players, it does a pretty good job of identifying the best of the best.

That said, I think it's difficult to see much of a difference between Team 'Top 10' and Team 'Top 100.' Of course, the latter is pulling from a pool of players that is nine times deeper. In any case, the lesson is this: As great as Heyward, Strasburg and this year's other elite prospects might be, they're hardly the be-all and end-all.

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