Prospect Rushing

When small market teams are near their budget limit, and do not have a good team on the field, they have no choice but to rebuild. They trade their most expensive players for prospects and try to build a good team as those prospects develop. Being able to do this well and as fast as possible is what makes a small market team effective.

A succesful rebuild of a team depends on three things: Good talent recongition, proper prospect handling and smartly spent money. The talent part is probably the most important of all three, because a team cannot win if it's players lack talent. However, the prospect hanlding is the most underrated one. It is is how fast teams move their prospects throguh the minor leagues and to the majors (Don't know if those are the right terms or if that's exaclty the right definition, but you get the point) . Sometimes a prospect is referred to as a failure or disappointment. Team officials, fans and sports writers/columnists tend to attribute a prospect¿s failure to succeed to pressure or to a supposed bad evaluation of his talent, when many times, the truth is that he was rushed to the Major Leagues.

When a prospect is considered as a can't-miss, his organization tends to move him throguh the minors way too fast, and bring him up to the majors, expecting him to develop properly there. Many times, when this happens, since the prospect isn't ready, he struggles in the majors, and his development is severely affected by playing at a level where his skills at the time are overmatched. Then, the prospect ends up as nothing more than a mediocre player, and people start looking for excuses and explanations without even considering the obvious fact that the player was rushed. It is much better to leave a prospect in the minors for an extra year than to bring him up a year early, because in the second case, the Major League team might be affected by having to wait longer to succeed, but when the prospect does arrive to the majors, he'll be readier than ever to help it win.


Here are some examples of players who have been rushed to the Major Leagues:

Daric Barton, Oakland Athletics.

He was considered a very good prospect, but the A's put him in their lineup for a full season in 2008 at age 22, despite seeing him prove he wasn't ready by struggling mightily at the major league level by hitting .213 throguh May and .230 through June.


Vin Mazarro and Gio Gonzalez, Oakland Athletics

The A's might also be making the same mistake with some of their young pitchers, especially Vin Mazzaro and Gio Gonzalez, who were both counted on to make 17 starts despite pitching terribly. They both had some good games, but they also had some really bad ones. We still don't know how good they'll be, but the way they were handled this season might affect them in the future.

Elvis Andrus, Texas Rangers.

The same thing happend, with Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus, who was brought up by the rangers at age 20 without having played a single game at AAA and penciled in as the starting shortstop. They even made Michael Young move from his position, as if it had been necessary to bring Andrus up. His numbers in the minors weren't impressive, but they weren't terrible either, and being 20, his hitting probably had some room for improvement. Bringing Andrus up prematurely might cost him and the Rangers in the future. It might have been the best move for the Rangers in the short-term though, as Andrus' outsanding defense is much better than that of Young, and it helped lower the number of runs the Rangers' pitchers allowed.

Felix Pie, Chicago Cubs/Baltimore Orioles.

Pie was at one point a top prospect for the Cubs, but was left in the majors for too long in 2007 and was kept in the majors for the whole season as a bench player by the orioles. Had he spent more time developing in the minors as a starting player, by now he might have been ready to contribute in as not only a good defensive player, but also as a good offensive player, something which he is not and may never be.

Ryan Zimmerman, Washington Nationals

Sometimes the rushed prospect ends up being a really good player, but never reaches the full potential he had. I think Ryan Zimmerman is an example of this. After a great season between levels single-A and double-A(he never played in AAA), the Nationals made him their starting third baseman. He had a great season for a rookie at age 21 and ended up second to Hanley Ramirez for the Rookie of the Year award, but regressed the next two seasons to an above-average, but not outstanding hitter. In 2009 his offense came back and he went to the All-Star game, won a gold glove and a Silver Slugger.

Zimmerman will probably continue to be one of the best third basemen in the game, but for a guy who hit .336 and had a .941 OPS in his first and only season in the minors, he hasn't been able to do nearly as much as he could have done given enough time to develop. And the worst part is that the Nationals could really use having one of the best players in all of baseball, instead of just a really good third baseman.

Alex Gordon, Kansas City Royals

He started his pro career in double-A, and he had a great season there. Without ever moving him up to triple-A, the Royals brought him up to the Major Leagues in 2007 and gave him the starting job at third base. For the first two months of the season, he hit under .200, but they kept him in the MLB club. He finished the season with a .247 average, without getting on base or hitting for a lot of power. That season might have forever hindered his potential of becoming a great hitter. Last season, he was injured and terrible, and next season, when he'll be 26, might be his last chance to become at least part of what he could have been with some time in triple-A and/or some common sense from the Royals officials who kept him in the major leagues after he hit .185 for the first two months of the season.

These are just a few examples of something that happens all too often among Major League Baseball teams. And I think it's no coincidence that the teams of the ex-prospects I've mentioned are currently losing teams. Rushing prospects is one of the most underrated ways of dooming a small-market team's future nowdays, not to mention their prospects' careers. There are of course, players like Hanley Ramirez, who despite being somewhat rushed to the majors without playing in triple-A or excelling in double-A, end up reaching their full potential. There are also players who, like Dustin Pedroia, succeed in their first full season despite being terrible at the beggining, but those cases are the exception, not the norm.