2013 Top 10 Lists 3: The Players

Following my overview of the 2013 Baseball Prospectus Top 10 lists, I am presenting a detailed set of lists to showcase the full prospect class. This class features some stunning debuts by elite prospects (such as Carlos Correa), elite prospects morphing into steady MLB regulars (Gerrit Cole, Christian Yelich, and Julio Tehran, for example), and some 50 Overall Future Prospects that have significantly developed beyond their prospect rank at the MLB level (Nolan Arenado, Danny Salazar, Adam Eaton, and A.J. Pollock serving as the best examples here). The prospect class has also featured several players lost to tragedy (Oscar Taveras, Jose Fernandez, and Yordano Ventura) and injury-interrupted careers (Zack Wheeler, Alex Wood, Dylan Bundy, and Jurickson Profar). Brewers fans will be especially interested in this prospect class due to the fact that it still features undeveloped question marks yet to establish MLB careers (Josh Hader, Lewis Brinson, Jonathan Villar, and Domingo Santana are the Brewers of interest here. Other notable prospects looking to establish themselves include Jameson Taillon and Joey Gallo, among others still).

2013 Top 10: Value and Risk
2013 Top 10: Organizations

The gist here is that a prospect class will never truly be complete. Extremely young players that appear on rankings may burn out, or they may turn into Josh Hader (who fell off lists, was traded twice, and now will appear as a member of the 2017 Top 10 prospect class). There will be 70 OFP prospects who immediately become superstars, prospects who lose their luster due to injury (or worse), highly rated prospects who become Wily Peralta or Billy Hamilton, and moderately rated prospects who become Jake Odorizzi or Nolan Arenado.

With that in mind, the first list is a Top 50 of the WARP performers from this prospect class thus far. Some players are listed twice because they appeared on two teams’ prospect lists due to the timing of offseason transactions:

Baseball Prospectus really did not miss on the 70 OFP grades in this class. Indeed, 13 of the Top 50 performers are from the 70 OFP class. 28 prospects from the 60 OFP class made the top performers list, as did 19 prospects from the 50 OFP class. It should be noted that four full seasons after the publication of the 2013 Top 10 prospects list, the WARP threshold appears relatively low, but even a 4.7 WARP career like Wilmer Flores is nothing to scoff at. Of course, there are some players destined to breakout from this list, even including highly regarded prospects like Carlos Correa, and some fun question marks remain (like Addison Russell or Wil Myers or Marcus Stroman).

A valid complaint about assessing a player by total WARP at this point in their career would be that a prospect graduating in 2013 would have a distinct advantage over a prospect graduating in 2016. For this reason, I’ve ranked each MLB performance for the 2013 Top 10 class by WARP-per-Year. Fittingly, Nolan Arenado remains the best player of the class thus far, but Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, and Correa shoot up the list.

It’s fun to look at this list and discern an annual WARP level to fit a player’s OFP. Is a 2.8 WARP truly a 70 OFP performance? Of course, the answer is “it depends:” a player that produces 2.8 WARP once is not a 70 OFP class guy, but a 70 class prospect who produces 2.8 WARP for a decade would obviously be an extremely valuable player.

It is worth noting, across the board, how rare it is for prospects to graduate from a Top 10 list and produce two consecutive seasons of 2.0 WARP or better within the first four seasons of that list. This suggests that the ultimate gamble with prospects may not be whether they reach the MLB, but when they cash out their OFP. Very few prospects are able to graduate and impact MLB clubs, which should indeed be a lesson to the rebuilding Brewers. The rebuild-to-contending mode will not occur due to the 2017 Brewers prospect class.

Finally, here are the 2013 Top 10 prospects yet to have reached the MLB. This list includes plenty of organizational players, as well as some interesting prospects on the 2017 Top 10 prospects lists.

I tried to mark current prospects on an MLB trajectory with a “Yet to debut (2017)” tag, but that is obviously subjective. This is especially tough to judge in the case of prospects who are still active but stalled in Class-AA or Class-AAA ball. Take a prospect like Jed Bradley, for example; Bradley looked like a Top 10 list casualty for some time, but then reached the MLB at the end of the 2016 campaign. So, anything goes, in some sense, once you reach the upper levels of affiliated ball.