August 26, 2003

Is There Such a Thing as a Pitching Prospect?

If you've read "Baseball Prospectus", you're probably familiar with their oft-repeated mantra, "There is no such thing as a pitching prospect" (or TINSTAPP for short.)  For years, I was a firm believer in this philosophy, using valuable farm roster space for pitchers only when no other choice existed.  Through the first three years of the BDBL's existence, I think I used only four farm spots for pitchers: Jeff Austin, Wes Anderson, Chin-Hui Tsao and Jeff Zimmerman.  As you can see, my philosophy seems justified, as only one of those four has produced at the Major League level so far, and that pitcher (Zimmerman) was drafted after he had already been a productive reliever at the MLB level for a few months.

Eventually, I began giving in to temptation, and added top pitching prospects like Brandon Claussen, Rafael Soriano, Adam Johnson and Dewon Brazelton to my farm, mainly because I realized that other people valued minor league pitchers more than I did.  It wasn't until this past year that I began stockpiling prospect arms for the purpose of filling future Cowtipper rotations, and the main reason for that shift in philosophy was that my farm was already stacked with position players.

Though my opinion of minor league pitchers has softened a bit over the years, the TINSTAPP philosophy lives on.  The question is: is there such a thing as a pitching prospect?  I mean, all successful Major League pitchers were prospects at some point, right?  So there must be such a thing, right?

In an attempt to answer this question, I put together the following (admittedly crude) study.  By no means is this study perfect, but my goal is merely to shed some light on this subject and maybe learn a thing or two - not to provide a definitive answer to this question of the ages.

In order to answer the question, we first have to ask, "what is a prospect?"  For the purposes of this study, let's say that a "prospect" is a pitcher that has appeared on Baseball America's annual top 100 prospects list.  Now, you and I both know that there are better prospect evaluators on the market than BBA, but they've done it longer than anyone else that I know of, and their prospect lists are available without doing too much research.

In the interest of time, let's focus on the cream of the crop: those pitchers that ranked among the top 20 by Baseball America for each year.  After all, those guys are about as "can't miss" as pitching prospects get, right?  We'll touch upon the rest of the list, but I don't have the energy to track down all the stats for all the pitchers in the top 100.  I'm hoping that's something on which Geisel and Billy can collaborate for a future article for the web site.

We'll start with 1990 (note: stats are Major League stats to date):

Overall, this group is pretty much league-average in terms of the early-to-mid '90's.  At their peaks, Avery and Kile were all-star-caliber pitchers, and Stanton continues to enjoy a solid career as a middle relief LOOGY.  Of these nine pitchers, however, more than half (five) had horribly disappointing careers.

Even the success stories weren't all that successful.  McDonald enjoyed one and a half good years, peaked at age 26, then dropped out of baseball at the tender age of 30.  Avery burst onto the scene at 21, enjoyed three quality years, then declined steadily each year after that and eventually disappeared from sight at age 29.  And Kile, of course, died a tragic death at age 34.  Of this class, he was by far the most successful.

Of the pitchers listed outside of the top-20, there were plenty of duds (Rafael Valdez, Narciso Elvira, John Ericks, Johnny Ard, Willie Smith, Dennis Burlingame, Julio Valera), and some mildly successful MLB pitchers (Wilson Alvarez, Charles Nagy, Mel Rojas, Brian Bohanon), but you have to dig all the way down to #86 (Kevin Appier) before you reach all-star gold.

Now, let's take a look at the Class of '91:

The class of '91 includes one future Hall-of-Famer (Mussina) and one pitcher that has enjoyed a good deal of success as a middle reliever (Rhodes).  Van Poppel and Garces have also enjoyed a season or two of worthwhile production in middle relief (though it took years of disappointment before they reached that level.)  For the most part, Van Poppel's career has been a spectacular failure, as has Salkeld's and Banks's.  Though Garces reached cult figure status in Boston, it would be tough to classify his career as a success story.

Outside of the top-20, Kurt Miller, Kirk Dressendorfer, Pete Schourek, Kile, Rafael Valdez, Steve Karsay and Jamie McAndrew round out the top 40.  It's interesting to note that the best pitcher from the Class of '90 fell in the BBA rankings from #11 to #34 the following year.  There are no other all-star caliber pitchers listed in the bottom 60.

Onto the Class of '92:

The big fish here, of course, is Pedro.  But just look at the rest of that list.  Aside from Rhodes and Wohlers, there's not one pitcher here who went on to become a useful big league pitcher.  Once again, Van Poppel turned in a couple of useful seasons of middle relief, but only after he'd flamed out in spectacular fashion.  BBA listed three pitchers as the top three prospects in baseball in 1992 and all three became major disappointments.  That's not an indictment against BBA so much as it is an indictment against pitching prospects.

In the remainder of the top 100, there are a couple of good relievers (Troy Percival at #38 and Roberto Hernandez at #45), but other than that, not much to write home about.

The Class of '93:

Wow.  What an awful, awful list of pitchers.  I suppose you could call Bere a success, as he's somehow managed to rack up over 1,000 big league innings.  But with a career ERA over 5.00, it really has to make you wonder how he's kept his job for so long.  Two of these eight never pitched an inning in a big league uni, and five of the eight failed to pitch 100 innings in the big leagues.  Not good.

Again, the rest of the list includes some good relievers (Percival, Todd Jones, Alan Embree and Karsay), but once again the best pitcher on the previous year's list dropped in the rankings, as Pedro Martinez fell from #10 all the way down to #62.  Derek Lowe also appears on the 1993 list (at #70), but otherwise there are no success stories to be found in the top 100.

Class of 1994:

Five of the seven pitchers listed here are still pitching in the big leagues nine years later, so based on that alone, the Class of '94 could be categorized as a rousing success.  Park has been a star, with about four and a half good years on his resumé.  Karsay has enjoyed four good years as a middle reliever, though it took him five years of failure as a starter before he found his niche.  Dreifort has never reached that #1 status that many (including I) envisioned when he began his career, but when healthy, he's been a solid middle-of-the-rotation guy.

Outside of the top 20, Lowe is listed at #63, Armando Benitez is at #71, and Billy Wagner is at #78.  That's about as exciting as it gets.

Class of 1995:

The Class of '95 is filled with quality relievers.  There are seven pitchers in the top 20 with at least 300 Major League innings, which is better than any of the previous classes.  Oddly enough, this is the first BBA top-100 class without any pitcher ranked in the top ten.  (Maybe we're onto something!)

The bottom 80 contains even more quality relievers (Ugueth Urbina, Latroy Hawkins and Paul Shuey.)  Park fell from #14 to #41 (I think I see a pattern here), and Jason Schmidt (#41), Andy Pettitte (#49) and Jeff Suppan (#50) all appear in the top 50.  The top 50 also includes the likes of Brian Barber, Julio Santana, Jim Pittsley, Frankie Rodriguez, Silva and Scott Ruffcorn.

The Class of 1996:

Either Baseball America is getting better at identifying good pitching prospects or 1996 was just an outstanding year for young pitching.  Eight of the top ten pitchers on the BBA list has logged more than 300 MLB IP - by far, the best so far.  Four of these pitchers have racked up more than 1,000 IP, which is pretty amazing.  And six of these ten have enjoyed at least one all-star season.  If you were to have built a BDBL pitching staff based solely upon the recommendations of Baseball America, you'd be sitting pretty right now.

The remainder of the top 100 is filled with #4 and #5 starters like Jeff Suppan, Jeff D'Amico, Shawn Estes, Scott Elarton, Glendon Rusch and Chris Carpenter.  Matt Morris also makes his top-100 debut at #56.  It's also filled with the likes of Pittsley, Jaret Wright, Marty Janzen and Andy Yount (and that's just in the top 50.) 

The Class of 1997:

One year after the biggest pitching prospect bounty to date, and Baseball America listed fewer pitchers in the top 20 than in any previous year.  Wood, Benson and Colon have been studs, while Pavano has been a disappointment and White has been nonexistent.  All in all, three out of five is outstanding.

The next 20 are almost as impressive as the top 20, with Roy Halladay (#23) and Morris (#25) checking in among the top 25.  Jarrod Washburn checks in at #66.  The rest of the list is filled with the usual assortment of #4 starters (Suppan, Brett Tomko, Chris Reitsma, Kelvim Escobar, Sidney Ponson), quality relievers (Braden Looper, Billy Koch, Vladimir Nunez) and complete busts (Mike Drumright, Kevin McGlinchy, Joe Fontenot, Seth Greisinger, Rafael Medina and Bobby Seay to name but a few.)  Interestingly, Livan Hernandez tumbled all the way from #8 to #100!

The Class of 1998:

The top three pitchers in the Class of '98 are the same top three from the Class of '97.  Of the newcomers to the top 20, Clement seems to be turning into a solid #1 or #2 starter, while Ankiel's troubles since his stellar rookie year have been well documented.

Eric Milton and Halladay are two success stories that appear in the top 50.  The rest of the top 100 is highlighted by Shawn Chacon, Washburn, Roberto Hernandez, Ramon Ortiz, Wade Miller, Ponson, Gil Meche and Javier Vazquez.  Of course, for every success there is a failure (Brian Rose, Ryan Anderson, Matt Anderson, Bruce Chen, Scott Elarton, Grant Roberts, Luis Rivera, Willie Martinez, Jason Grilli, etc., etc..)

Class of 1999:

Of this list, only Penny, Clement and Halladay have enjoyed some success for more than one season.  Anderson and Riley have been monumental failures, while Patterson is still trying to overcome injuries.  Chen was useful for about half a season, and may still be useful some day as a LOOGY.  All in all, not a great success rate for the Class of '99.

A.J. Burnett just missed the top 20 at #21, and would have made the whole group look a little better (though he, too, must overcome injuries to have any sort of future.)  Mark Mulder (#27), Odalis Perez (#31), Billy Koch (#33), Octavio Dotel (#45), Jeff Weaver (#51), Kris Benson (#59), Ted Lilly (#66), Gil Meche (#78), Wade Miller (#80), Randy Wolf (#96) and Scott Williamson (#97) fill out the top 100, which leads me to believe that this class really wasn't bad at all - Baseball America just got the order wrong.

While Weaver, Benson, Lilly, Meche, Miller, Wolf and Williamson all missed the top 50, Ryan Bradley, Matt White, Rob Bell, Chad Hutchinson and Jason Grilli all made it.

Class of 2000:

This is the last class I'll review, as we're now getting into recent history that will be too difficult to judge.  Despite the recentness of this list, it is impressive that three of the top eight have racked up over 500 innings already.  Mulder is obviously the jewel of this list, and Wells and Burnett have established themselves as solid #3/#4 starters.  Beckett could be an ace in the making, though he'll have to overcome the abuse of his manager and pitching coach in order to do so.  Anderson and Riley are the only two real duds on this list, as Ankiel at least gave us one all-star caliber year before he burst into flames, and Patterson still has promise of becoming a good pitcher some time in the near future.

The rest of the top 100 is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly: Penny, Tony Armas, Francisco Cordero, Wes Anderson, Jon Garland, Barry Zito (#41), Chad Hutchinson, Eric Gagne, Brad Baisley, Wascar Serrano, C.C. Sabathia, Kurt Ainsworth, Rob Bell, Aaron Myette, Adam Eaton, Ben Sheets, Miller, Bung-Hole Kim, Orber Moreno, Jason Jennings and Tim Drew.

So, what have we learned?  Let's start by adding together all the totals.  The average pitcher ranked in the top 20 by Baseball America from 1990-2000 looks something like this:

Joe Prospect: 585.2 IP, 8.5 H/9, 3.7 BB/9, 7.5 K/9, 4.20 ERA

That's not bad (probably your average #3 starter), but probably not what you'd expect from a top 20 prospect.  Of the 84 pitchers listed among the top 20 by BBA over those years, 12 (14%) didn't throw a single Major League inning, and 26 (31%) own a career big league ERA of at least 4.75.

So, in other words, if you take any pitcher at random from BBA's top 20 prospects list between 1990-2000, there is about a 50/50 chance (actually 45/55) that that pitcher will become completely useless.

On the flip side, there's about a 40% chance that your random pitcher will enjoy at least one all-star season, and about a 12% chance that your random pitcher will be Darryl Kile, Pedro Martinz, Mark Mulder, Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay, Kerry Wood or Bartolo Colon.

Call me crazy (which you all often do anyway), but I'd take those odds.  Of course, you can shift the odds in your favor even more by doing a little research and compiling your own top prospect list that may likely do a better job of predicting future ability than Baseball America's list.

The value of having an all-star player making minimum-wage (or well below market value) cannot be underestimated.  And with the new wrinkle added to our auction (where players earning more than $5 million must be signed), all-star pitchers that make less than minimum wage are as good as gold.

I've changed my thinking when it comes to pitching prospects (as evidenced by my current roster.)  There is such a thing as a pitching prospect.  You just have to accept that the chances of any pitching prospect becoming a useful member of your roster is a completely random flip of the coin.  Chances are, you will get stuck with a dud (or two, or three, or four...)  But if you stockpile enough pitching prospects, you could easily find yourself holding the rights to the next $100,000 Pedro Martinez.  And how great would that be?