Graduating from Prospectdom

Was just looking, out of curiosity, at the last season the Indians had given a sustained tryout to as many young guys as they have this year, and thought I would share the results. The answer is 2003. I put together a list of all the intervening years because I wanted to see a season-by-season list not of rookies, for which the qualification criteria are very low and thus often premature, but of players in whom the club made a serious investment on the field (cutoff of 26* appearances for pitchers and 270** PAs for hitters) for the first time in those players' careers.

These seasons were, generally speaking, the ones in which players became major-leaguers-or-bust. Obviously there are a couple of exceptions to that rule - guys who continued to shuttle due to injury or other reasons. (e.g., Jensen, Cliff, Fausto). But most graduated from prospectdom either by becoming regular major leaguers, losing priority at their position, or leaving baseball.

I projected this year's figures, and included Santana because he would certainly have qualified were it not for the injury, and because he was exceptional in the speed of his graduation from prospectdom. PAs or appearances are listed next to names.

2010

Marson 213 // LaPorta 327 // Crowe 373 // Donald 277 // Santana 192 // Brantley 178

Talbot 21 // Masterson 26 // Ambriz 31 // Hermann 29

2009

Valbuena 398

Sipp 46 // JSmith 37 // CPerez 32

2008

Asdrubal 418 // Francisco 499 // Choo 370

Mujica 33

2007

Barfield 444 // Gutz 301

RPerez 44 // Mastny 51 // Fultz 49 // Jensen 26

2006

Fausto 38

2005

Grady 706

2004

Victor 520

Cliff 33 // Matt Miller 57 // Cliff Bartosh 34

2003

Blake 577 // Crisp 447 // Gerut 525 // Bard 329 // Peralta 270 // Hafner 324 // Broussard 429 // B Phillips 393

Westbrook 34 // Jason Davis 27 // Betancourt 33 // Billy Traber 33

I'm interested to hear whether others think this is a useful way to look at our history of player development, or merely a reiteration of what we already know. One thing I found encouraging was that, regardless of the year, a fairly high percentage of guys given long looks for the first time in their careers produced something significant for the organization, either as Indians themselves, as trade fodder, or both. Still others have had very good careers elsewhere. I suppose we could say that at this particular stage of experience, players became good bets.

In fact, out of the 32 players listed from 2003 - 2009, 23 are current major leaguers, about half of whom are league average or better. I don't know if it's worth extrapolating, but that's what happened.

*Huff, Sowers, and Laffey were each just below this line in 2009.

** Andy Marte was just below this line in 2008.