If you prefer FanPosts that are short and relatively uncomplicated, I would recommend that you proceed no further with this one.  If you like long posts with data tables and no clear conclusions, then feel free to spend the next ten minutes of your life trying to wade through what follows.

The Rangers had five players on BA’s 2008 list of baseball’s Top 100 prospects and will likely have 6-8 prospects on the 2009 list.  Those who like to dismiss the importance of the minor leagues often use anecdotal evidence to suggest that outstanding prospects often fail to become productive major league players.  To understand if there is truth behind the anecdotes, I evaluated the major league performances of players who were ranked by BA to be among the Top100 prospects in baseball prior to the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 seasons.  I used ERA+ to evaluate the annual performances of the pitchers and OPS+ to evaluate the annual contributions of the hitters in years in which they accumulated at least 40 IP or 100 ABs at the major league level. 

As will be described below, the data were compiled and evaluated in a variety of ways to estimate the success/failure rates for top prospects, how quickly the prospects begin to perform at above average levels, how prospects at different positions perform, and how rankings correlate with major league performance. 

Two things worth noting before presenting the results are that:

(1) the data for players who were ranked multiple times between 2003 and 2007 were only used once in the analysis.  I used the highest ranking that the player achieved to bin his data.
(2) youthful prospects who are still progressing through the minor leagues and have thus far failed to play in the major leagues were not used in the analysis.

Success/Failure Rate
259 players from the five Top100 lists that were used for this analysis have either failed to progress through the minor leagues or have had at least one major league season with 40 IP or 100 ABs.  30 of the 259 players debuted in 2007 or 2008 and averaged an OPS+/ERA+ of less than 90 in the ML season(s) that they qualified.  Examples from this list of 30 players include Justin Upton, Phil Hughes, Eric Hurley, Homer Bailey, Luke Hochevar, Clay Buchholz, and Jonathan Sanchez.   In my opinion, it is still too early to determine if any or all of these players will become productive major league players, so I eliminated them from the calculations described below. The remaining 229 players were used to estimate the success/failure rates for the prospects ranked in 2003-2007. 

38 of the prospects (17% of the 229 considered) have failed to advance to the major leagues and are either out of baseball or struggling in the minor leagues.  Another 8% of the 229 players have received playing time in at least three major league seasons and have an average ERA+ or OPS+ below 90.  The remaining 75% of the 229 prospects considered have averaged an ERA+/OPS+ of at least 90 in their major league seasons.  133 players (almost 60% of the 229) have averaged an ERA+/OPS+ of more than 100 in the 1-5 major league seasons that they’ve had at least 100 AB’s or 40 IP.  Based on ERA+/OPS+, 3 out of 4 highly ranked prospects graduate to the major leagues as productive players and 3 out of 5 perform at above average levels beginning with their 1st or 2nd year seasons.

                                                                     # of Prospects        % of Total
Failed to advance to ML                                     38                          17
Averaged less than 90 ERA+/OPS+                19                             8
Averaged ERA+/OPS+ of 90-99                        37                          16
Averaged ERA+/OPS+ of 100 or greater      133                         59

The average ERA+/OPS+ for many of the players considered in this analysis were negatively affected by relatively poor debut seasons.  To address whether the highly ranked prospects develop into above average ML performers, I used the ERA+/OPS+ for each player’s best season to evaluate the same 229 players as above.  In this case, 181 of the highly-regarded prospects (79% of the 229 considered) posted at least one season with an ERA+/OPS+ of 100 or greater, revealing that 4 out of 5 highly ranked prospects post above average seasons within their first 1-3 years in the major leagues. 

Splitting the prospects into pitchers and position players reveals that of the 110 pitchers who qualified for this analysis, 82 (75%) have posted at least one season with an ERA+ above 100 and 89 of the 109 position players (82%) have posted an OPS+ above 100.  At least for the seasons considered here, there appears to be a slightly better chance that highly ranked hitters will turn into above average major leaguers than pitchers.

Success/Fail Rates Correlate with Prospect Rank
When the prospects are considered based upon where they were ranked, a very interesting trend is revealed.  As noted in the table below, more than 90% of the pitchers and hitters ranked among the Top25 graduate to the major leagues and post above average numbers.  Approximately 80% of the pitchers and hitters whose ranking topped out in the 26-75 range posted an ERA+ or OPS+ of greater than 100 in at least one of their first three seasons.  The successful graduation rates for pitchers and hitters falls to 69-75% for prospects ranked among the bottom 25. 

Ranking    ERA+ >100 (Total pitchers)    OPS+ >100 (Total hitters) 
Overall                     75% (110)                                  82% (109)               
Top25                      91% (31)                                    94% (40)
26-50                       79% (27)                                    80% (30)
51-75                        82% (27)                                   82% (19)
76-100                      69% (25)                                   75% (20)

The discrepancy in the success rates for the Top25 and Bottom25 prospects appears to be a reflection of the types of players that fall in the two categories.  The Bottom25 in the Top100 lists are heavily populated with very young players in the lower minors while the Top25 mostly comprises players at AA and up.  In fact, many of the players who made up the Top25 in the latter years used for this analysis were among the Bottom25 in the earlier rankings.  Because I only used the highest ranked position for each player, the success rates for the lower ranked brackets were reduced relative to what they would have been had I used the numbers for each player in each of the years that he was ranked.   

Annual Major League Performance
Of the prospects who graduate to the major leaguers, I was curious to know how well they perform in their rookie major league seasons and how much they improve during the course of their first five seasons.  As with the success/fail rates above, I looked at this subject in two ways.  Simply averaging the OPS+/ERA+ for all of the players with qualifying major league team reveals that the ranked prospects as a group start off as slightly above average major leaguers and progress to significantly above average producers by their third seasons (see table below). 

                  Avg ERA+/OPS+ (StDev)                      
   Yr 1               Yr 2            Yr 3            Yr 4              Yr 5
103 (32)      108 (32)    115 (30)     112 (28)      119 (31)

The standard deviations shown in parentheses above are relatively large, revealing that there is a broad range in performance among the players.  In contrast to the success/fail rates described above, the variance in performance cannot be explained by differences between the players ranked among the Top25 and the players ranked farther down on the list.  In fact, there is almost no difference between the major league performances of the players ranked in the Top25, 26-50, 51-75, and 76-100.  Instead, the bulk of the variance is due to differences in OPS+ between players at defensive positions (SS, 2B, C, CF) and players at offensive positions (1B, DH, 3B, COF) as well as differences in the ERA+ of starting pitchers and relief pitchers.  Below is a breakdown of the annual performances of players at the various positions.

                                             Avg ERA+/OPS+                      
Position   Players  Yr 1    Yr 2    Yr 3    Yr 4    Yr 5    3 Yr Avg   5 Yr Avg   ML Avg
1B/DH          16        109     131    126     126      122         122          123          115
2B                10          88       97     105      91       129           96           102           96
3B                17        103     109     108     131     145         107           119         109
C                  14          88       97      102     113     113          96            103           86
CF                15          87       90      104      96       121         94              99            97
COF             33          99      103     112    100      109         105          105          109
SS               11          80        91       88       99        87          86             89             94
LHP             24         103     116     107     91       NA          109            NA       
RHP            70         106      106     112    121     129         108          115
Reliever     16         157      141     172    151       NA        157   
The reliever category was created to account for the late inning relievers whose ridiculous ERA+ numbers skewed the pitcher data.  NA is used where too few players were available to provide an accurate estimate of performance.

The final three columns show the averages for the prospects at each position during their first 3 and 5 seasons along with the major league averages for the players at the corresponding positions during the 2007 season.  For the most part, the prospects play slightly below the league average for their position during their rookie years.  The prospects then out-perform the league average for most positions beginning in their 2nd year seasons and continue to improve thereafter. 

Top Prospects to Star Major Leaguers
Top prospects are often projected to be future major league stars.  To estimate how often this happens within the first five years of a top prospect’s major league career, I used the annual ERA+ and OPS+ for players who accrued major league service and calculated the percentage that posted great #’s (>119), above average #’s (100-119), below average #’s (80-99), and poor #’s (<80).         

ERA+/OPS+     Yr 1      Yr 2      Yr 3      Yr 4       Yr 5
     >119            23%      27%    42%      36%     46%
 100-119          29%      32%    26%      31%     24%
    80-99            28%     26%     18%      25%     19%
      <80              20%     15%     13%       8%      11%

Beginning with their rookie years, the performance levels of highly ranked prospects are close to equally distributed between the four performance classes used.  The performance distribution skews toward above-average levels by the players’ second seasons and is profoundly above average by their third seasons.  Perhaps the most noteworthy number in the table above is the one that shows that 42% of the prospects who are ranked among BA’s Top100 and who manage to get to the major leagues post an ERA+ or OPS+ of 120 or greater in their third seasons.  If you want to know where star major league players come from, look at BA’s lists of the Top100 rated prospects in baseball.    

What does this mean for the Rangers?
Barring trades involving Ranger prospects or young major leaguers, it is possible that a future Rangers team could feature eighteen players who appeared on at least one BA Top100 list (table below).  Using the results presented above, these current and future Rangers could be expected to perform in the major leagues at the levels presented in the right-hand column.  As noted in the “Likelihood” column, there is a very good chance that most of these players will one day become at least solid major league players.

Player            Projections:   Highest BA Rank     Likelihood    ML OPS+/ERA+    
Andrus                                                18                          94%                   89
Smoak                                             Top25                      94%                 123
Davis*                                              Top25                    100%                 123
Beltre                                               Top50                      80%                    99
MaxRam                                          Top50                      80%               103/123
Teagarden                                         77                          82%                  103
Borbon                                            Top100                    75%                    99

Feliz                                                  Top25                      91%                  108
Holland                                            Top25                      91%                  109
Main                                                 Top25                       91%                 108
Perez                                                Top25                      91%                 109
Ramirez                                           Top50                      79%                 108
Font                                                  Top50                      79%                 108
Diamond                                            52                          82%                 157
Hurley                                                 68                          82%                 108
Harrison                                             90                          69%                 109
Beavan                                            Top100                    69%                 108
Boscan                                            Top100                    69%                 108
* Davis’ inclusion is based on his likely ranking had he not been pushed to the major leagues in 2008.
The “Highest BA Rank” is either the highest rank that a prospect has already achieved or my estimates for high highly a player will be ranked during their minor league career.
MaxRam has two numbers in the OPS+ to address whether you think he will hit like a catcher or a 1B/DH.


Assuming the players reach the minor league ceilings projected above and the minor league players advance through the minors at a rate of 1-2 levels per year, then the 2011 Rangers line-up, rotation, and bullpen could look like:

Lineup                 ML Season      OPS
Kinsler (2B)               6th              125
Young (3B)              11th              100
Hamilton (RF)          5th               130
Smoak    (1B)          2nd               131
Davis (DH)               4th                126
MaxRam (C)            4th                126
Murphy (LF)              5th                100
Borbon (CF)             3rd               104
Andrus (SS)             2nd                 91     

Rotation             ML Season       ERA+
Holland                    3rd                 107
Feliz                         2nd                 106
Main                        2nd                  106
Harrison                 4th                    91
Hurley                     4th                   121
McCarthy                6th                   100

Bullpen              ML Season       ERA+
Francisco(?)          7th                  130
Madrigal                 4th                  120
Wilson                    6th   
Diamond               2nd                 141
Rupe                      4th
Hunter                   3rd
Strop                      3rd
Kiker                      2nd
Feldman                6th
Murphy                  2nd

By 2011, Beltre, Perez, Boscan, Beavan, and others will likely be at AA or AAA and ready to step in if needed.  A great offense coupled with above average pitching almost certainly equals playoff contention.