Jay Top Prospects All Time

Friday, October 03 2014 @ 09:56 AM EDT

Contributed by: John Northey

With the amazing year we've seen in the Jays minors it got me to thinking about prospects and how the Jays ones have done and what is the best year we've ever seen.  Could we currently have the strongest farm in Jays history?  Doubtful, but lets do a check.

I did the following comment in one of the threads and it is a good starting point for this...

The minors are looking good.  What are some of the best years for the minors?  To go unbiased I'll check Baseball America....

BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: All-Time Top 100 Prospects (note: different link than I used before) covers 1990 to 2014.  For that time frame...

So will the Jays have 7 this year?  Wouldn't bet on it but they have had a lot of good players.

FYI: the most anyone has had was 9 - Dodgers in 2006 and Royals in 2011.  5 times 8 was reached including by the Red Sox this spring (dang it).

What about earlier than 1990?  No BA top 100 lists for then but the Baseball Cube has the top 10 BA prospects for the Jays from 1983 to present (I do love the internet). 
1989: 9 of the top 10 made the majors, with significant careers for Derek Bell, Junior Felix, Luis Sojo, Mark Whiten, and Francisco Cabrera with honourable mention to Denis Boucher.
1988: all 10 made it to the majors, careers for Felix, David Wells, Francisco Cabrera (more one big hit in the playoffs for Atlanta), Todd Stottlemyre, Greg Myers, Whitten.  #1 was Sil Campusano
1987: 8 of 10 made it, Todd Stottlemyre, Jeff Musselman, Rob Ducey, Glenallen Hill, Nelson Liriano, and Mike Sharperson had decent careers
1986: 7 made it, Kelly Gruber, Sharperson, Fred McGriff, Hill were of note
1985: 7 made it, McGriff, Gruber, Sharperson, Hill, and Wells were of note
1984: 8 made it, Tony Fernandez #1, McGriff, Jimmy Key of note (killer big 3 there)
1983: just 7 made it, Fernandez, John Cerutti, McGriff, and Geno Petralli of note

For earlier years I'll do a check of BR for minor league stats (1982 is based on 1981 stats, etc)...
1982: Fernandez, Jesse Barfield, Mitch Webster,Petralli, Cerutti, Mark Eichhorn, are of note
1981:  Petralli, Barfield, Fernandez, Mitch Webster, Eichhorn, Luis Leal jump out at me
1980: Lloyd Moseby, Barfield, Petralli, Ernie Whitt, Eichhorn, Leal, Garth Iorg
1979: Moseby, Petralli, Whitt, Iorg, Danny Ainge (yes, the basketball player), Barfield, Dave Stieb
1978: Barfield (there were others but can only find info for one minor league team, their low A one)

So a few of those years had some pretty good prospects but no idea which were viewed that way at the time (Moseby always was, as was Ainge but Eichhorn wasn't and I doubt Stieb was at first).
Of all the top 10 lists (1983 to 2014) what positions are represented? Using primary position (ie: 3B-2B is listed only at 3B) I get 139 P, 27 CA, 27 1B, 25 RF, 25 3B, 20 LF, 16 SS, 15 2B, 8 CF, 7 OF (DJ Davis, Anthony Alford the most recent ones), 1 IF (D.J. Boston).  So the Jays have been very weak at developing CF's it seems as all 8 cases had other positions listed as well (LF or OF) - they were Gose, Campusano, and Marisnick with Wells listed as a LF.

Who showed up the most on the top 10 lists?  IE: guys who the Jays probably should've called up earlier or who were very obvious talents very early on.
Clearly being listed multiple times is not a guarantee of quality.  Still, lots of really good guys on the 4 time list.

So which prospects became something special over the years?  I'd say any of 1000+ hits, 100+ HR, 50+ wins, 100+ saves would qualify as being a successful prospect.

Hitters first... In order of lifetime hits

Noteables...

Pitching in win order... Listing all with 50+ wins

Noteables...

So of the 310 top 10 prospects there have been a lot of really good players of course.  A few near HOF quality (Halladay, Wells, Delgado, McGriff, Delgado, Olerud, Young, Fernandez), many All-Stars and 'if only' guys.  Some reached their peak here, some not until well after their time here.

248 of those 310 did reach the majors.  Some are double/triple/etc. counted, but we are just measuring 'if in the top 10 could they make it'.  So 80% do reach at some point.  Of the 169 unique players 124 reached (73%).

FYI: one of the best, and maybe a HOF'er, produced by the Jays system is Jeff Kent but he never made a BA top 10 list.  Go figure.  He was in the system in 1990/1991/1992 as well, when the Jays had a massive system according to the top 100 prospect lists. 

So tons of talent, but also tons of 'argh' there too.  We'll see if the talent this year makes this list more or less impressive by around 2020 I'd expect but we could see guys sneaking into the majors and even having good careers without reaching until well after that.

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