At what age do you start to discount prospects?

[The Wise One]

A prospect is no longer a prospect when there is enough proof of the Peter Principal and their playing baseball thusly peters out. The exception is AAAA players that provide the filler in the upper levels because too many prospects in your system petered out and there is a desire to field a winning team in the upper minors.

[ashbury]

Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers offered the rule of thumb that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class at any field. Counter-examples abound, of course - that's why it's just a rule of thumb. Since a full-time job is approximately 2,000 hours a year, it suggests 5 years - less, if you are capable of applying yourself productively at an overtime rate for months on end.

 

A lot of what's being said here fits in that paradigm, if you take a loose definition of "deliberate" to mean that you get only the best training and strength of competitors in the professional minor leagues, and years of college count only as months or even weeks in the pros. Ballplayers work hard, but they don't put in 80-hour weeks. There's also a physical maturation going on ("man muscles" etc) that can't be rushed.

 

So five years, give or take, and with the occasional ballpark prodigy/genius who takes only two or three seasons. You can tell who won't make it in less time than that, in a lot of cases, which is why most guys don't make it past single-A. But you can't really write off every washout until enough time has passed, and I've been on board with something like 5 years for a while now.

[Loosey]

I don't think there is a one size fits all description for this. It is more art that science as to when to cut bait or give up hope of a player being a contributor at the Major League level.  There are also different levels of contributor as well.  

 

Example: Kohl Stewart:  Drafted out of high school early in the first round.  Immediate prospect hype, possible future Ace material.  His first partial season in rookie ball he did very well.  The hype was real. Then in the following seasons he put up decent stats from an ERA perspective, but was lacking strikeouts.  Fast Forward to this year where he is still in AA and struggling out of the gates.  He is still only 22 years old, but has had 3+  seasons of minor league experience and hasn't "wowed" anyone yet.  

 

Is he still a prospect, Yes.  However, the level of contributor he is expected to become at the major league level has declined sharply in my opinion.  I was assume #4/5 starter at best in the future.  A big fall from potential Ace 4 or 5 years ago.  

[ashbury]

I don't think there is a one size fits all description for this. It is more art that science as to when to cut bait or give up hope of a player being a contributor at the Major League level. 

I agree.

 

I think after a few seasons it boils down to this: if the batter gets "his" pitch, can he put it in the bleachers or in the gap, or just a lazy fly to the warning track? If the former, then it's still worth trying to teach him how to pick up that breaking ball destined toward the dirt. Can the pitcher get the occasional swing and miss from the better hitters in his league? If so, then keep working with him on his nearly non-existent command. No one has a formula for getting the player to internalize what is needed, in weeks instead of years. So you wait. At some point, the team's evaluators conclude from experience, "he's never gonna get it." Meanwhile, the player has gotten scratch singles on pitches he should have parked, and the pitcher gets strikeouts on ridiculous curveball swings or caught-lookings right down the middle, because the opponents are also works in progress, making the stats hard to interpret.

 

And that's why it's often hard for fans to guess whom to follow and whom to give up on.

[gil4]

 

I'll add:  

 

Always keep eyes and mind open, because there's always another Kirby Puckett lurking out there......

I don't remember one before and haven't seen one since.  We will see other great players, but the great ones tend to have fewer good comps.