I'd take the futures of any of the next five position players in the rankings (Sano, Yelich, Lindor, Baez, Buxton) over Hamilton's. If I thought Bogaerts would end up at SS, I'd take his, too.

-- MWE

In the discussion thread of the Nick Johnson retirement link, this link to Baseball Prospectus, circa 2001 was quite fun. Never overestimate prospect lists and never underestimate the value of actual Major League talent.

Yeah, but then again, If Nick Johnson had even below average health instead of god god awful, he would have been a very valuable MLer.


Also, the title of this article is rather unfortunate, the last thing most fans want to hear in a sentence with their prospect is "breaking"

Gregor Blanco, at age 20, hit eight home runs in Myrtle Beach, which is one of the harder parks in which to hit a home run in the minors. Billy Hamilton, through age 21, has hit a total of 7 minor league home runs.

Brett Gardner had 9, total, through his age 24 season (he's now hit 15 HRs in the Majors). He also K'ed a bunch in the minors (less than Hamilton, but he walked less too) and still K's a fair share in the Majors. He's been pretty good when he's been healthy. Of course, a large part of that is being awesome defensively. But he's got legs, no arm, no power and his contact skills aren't other worldly. If Hamilton can pick up the OF, I could see him producing similar value.

Brett Gardner's game translated a lot better into the majors then I feared though, and he has actually show a slightly better ISO in the majors so far then in the minors, though that's mostly because almost 1/3 of his minor career was in Trenton.

Still, Gardner's more of an example of a relatively unheralded C+ to B- prospect turning good. Hamilton's rated a lot higher than him.


Also, I chuckled a bit seeing a Adam Eaton on the list, who also has big beard. He actually put up crazy good number, but I guess half of that is PCL and/or him being a very polished College player. still if those number even translate 80% to the majors he's a star and he did manage a pretty good OBP in a brief major stint.

IIRC, Posnanski once wrote a column about the scout that found Pujols (he was no longer in baseball and working at a grocery store!). The scout loved Pujols' glove but had doubts about his bat.

Didn't find the Pos story, but found this one about Dave Karaff:

The things he did as a scout make him proud, even if it didn't end like he wanted it to. That makes Pujols' recent public comments cut deep.

The slugger, for instance, told The Kansas City Star: "He said I wasn't going to make the big leagues. That's why he got fired."

He told USA Today : "How can you draft a guy and say you don't know if he's going to make the big leagues? All of a sudden, the next year (I'm) in the big leagues, and he wants to take all the credit."

That burned up Karaff's family, who felt like a superstar multi-millionaire was picking on a guy who stocks shelves at Wal-Mart. They say Karaff isn't trying to take any credit.

Here's another story about a different guy (Edgar Willard) who discovered Pujols (and Nolan Ryan).

Still, Gardner's more of an example of a relatively unheralded C+ to B- prospect turning good. Hamilton's rated a lot higher than him.

And my point is that I don't think Hamilton should be rated that much higher until and unless he shows some ability to drive the ball. Ranking him the 11th best prospect in all of baseball implies a likelihood of success that Hamilton hasn't demonstrated yet.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how fast you are; it matters what you can do with the bat in your hands, and Hamilton's ability to do much with the bat is still a big question mark.

-- MWE

It's not like Lindor and Buxton don't also have huge questions with their bat. It's also weird to hear you say that, while excluding Bogaerts from the group you did.

Anyways, it may be just because he is new and shiny but I'm liking Dahl a lot more than I probably should.

Butler had an extremely good batting eye. Look at his numbers in the minors. I'm not saying Hamilton can't be a fine player in the bigs but Butler may be the top of that type of player and he showed the skills in the minors.

Butler had a .338/.461(!)/.452 batting line in the minors over 1668 PA. He didn't become a regular in the majors until age 26. I was wondering why it took so long for the Braves to notice him, but I see they did give him a pretty good shot in 1981 and 1982 and he did not do very well.