What kind of prospects were today's MLB stars?

Yesterday I looked at each prominent player on the Indians roster to see what kind of prospect they were back in their prospecting days, using Baseball America's annual Top 100 list, and the top 30 rankings they do each offseason for every team (see the sidebar below).

I found that every significant member of the Indians ranked among a team's top 30 prospects at some point, which I don't think is all that surprising. More notably, 5 of the 6 pitchers most likely to start games for the Indians in 2014, and the 9 of the 10 position players expected to get the most playing time were ranked among a team's top 10 prospects at some point before entering their age-24 season (among the top 8, in fact). Corey Kluber and Yan Gomes were the only exceptions.

We're often reminded (painfully, sometimes) that not all top prospects become good MLB players, but it does seem like almost every good MLB player was a pretty well-regarded prospect. I've seen lists for single teams that go 50-100 prospects deep, but it doesn't seem like there's much reason to beyond 30, and if all you do is focus on the top dozen or so, you'll catch the vast majority of eventual MLB starters.

I don't have time to run through the same exercise for every team, but I thought it might be interesting to look at the best players around baseball, to see how each of them was rated as a prospect. I'm using Baseball-Reference's WAR from 2011-2013 as a proxy for finding baseball's best, but doesn't mean these are precisely the 80 best players or that they're in precisely the right order. The point of this exercise isn't to rank MLB players, it's to see what type of prospects very good players were. I hope we can agree that the players listed have been very good MLB players at some recent point.

A quick key:

• Top 100 Peak refers to the highest a player ever ranked on BA's Top 100
• Team Peak refers to the highest a player ever ranked on BA's top 30 for a particular team
• Age refers to a player's age for the season that led to his peak rating.

In the event that a player reached the same ranking more than once, I've listed the earliest instance; "NR" means a player was never ranked on such a list. Also, I'm not including players who came over from Japan and went straight into MLB, since they were never prospects here.

Pitchers

25 of the 30 pitchers listed were in a team's top 10 prospects at least once, and all 25 of them had gotten there by the offseason following their age-22 season. 23 of the 30 were among a team's top 5.

22 of the 30 pitchers listed were on Baseball America's Top 100 at least once, 18 of them were among the top 50.

There is no such thing as a pitching prospect (TINSTAAPP) is a common saying around baseball, because so many top Minor League pitchers don't pan out, but as you can see, most of the best pitchers in baseball today were in fact very highly touted prospects.

Position Players

All 30 of the players listed were among a team's top 30 at some point. In fact, all of them were among a team's top 16. 28 of them were among a team's top 5 at some point, with Zobrist and Bourn as the only exceptions.

24 of the players listed were on Baseball America's Top 100 at least once. 20 of them were among BA's top 50. Even more so than with pitchers, baseball top position players were mostly identified as future stars.

Not every top prospect becomes a star, but most stars were once top prospects.

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