** Welcome to "The Chuck Stop" with Chuck Tinkler **
"Old Guys Rule!!" (Part III)

In our world, 2 + 2 goes not equal 4. As well, 2 + 2 + 2 does not equal 6. That’s for no other reason than a team with 12 guys at 6 WAR each will beat a team with 36 guys at 2 WAR all day long. So, for this particular deal to have worked out, Beckett for roughly a 5th, 10th and 15th, and arguably for any “dilute the superstar” deal to work out, one of those picks had to hit pay dirt or the deal was a bust. There were easier ways to get a handful of average players than to trade away the best and only thing that team ever had. But because I was set to receive the “next great Yankee ace” back, plus two high-end insurance policies for my trouble, that was all taken care of. Or so I thought.

Prospect guides don’t really seem to tout guys the way they used to. It’s hard to envision a major prospect resource putting their necks on the line with statements like “the next great Yankee ace” anymore. There’s been more than enough faceplants out there to keep any well-seasoned prognosticator from ever getting too excited, ever again. The fact is, a lot of players come through that have the potential to do a lot of things, but which ones will actually fulfill their promise is impossible to know. The best we can do is make some association between ability and outcome, but that is anything but a safe bet. 

Phil Hughes is a perfect example. He was prospect perfection. He threw hard, had great secondary stuff, had excellent command, had a good baseball body, played for the Yankees…he basically was everything a team could hope for in a prospect. Phil, of course, never reached the lofty heights forecast of him. Clay Buchholz didn’t really either. He put out a couple of nice cards, but all and all, fell pretty far short of what was hoped of him. Cameron Maybin fell quite a bit short as well. And now, some ten years later, can anyone really say why?

Because no one should have had those expectations on them in the first place! That gets my vote anyway. The sniff test is a valid one; there are though smells that the human nose cannot and will not ever be able to detect. Which is why stripping this thing down to just the numbers will give us a valuable look. Onto the show…

What could I have expected to get for a #3 overall? What can anyone expect to get from a top 5 overall?

Below are draft years 2001-2006. It’s a small sample but a sample nonetheless. The numbers in each box are career WAR. About half of the guys listed are still playing, few though have much probability to add significantly to their WAR totals from this point forward.
 

At the high end was the first pick in 2001, 101 WAR, the owner of which is none other than Albert Pujols. It is probably fair to say that Pujols provided about as much as anyone can hope to get out of a draft pick, ever. (Mike Trout though is on pace to obliterate that total – 48.5 WAR in just 5 full seasons - he will almost certainly end up as the new gold standard.)

Pujols, we must remember, was an absolute monster for about ten years when he inexplicably became mortal upon signing that 10-year deal with the Angels. Albert was just a machine, cranking out 1.000+ OPS seasons annually and playing nothing less than Gold Glove-caliber defense at 1B. At the other end of the spectrum though would be the owner of a lowly career 2.5 WAR, accrued slowly and painfully across 10 professional season, the lemon of all lemons, Mr. Delmon Damarcus Young. Delmon...wait…timeout has been called…the wife is coming out of the dugout and pointing towards the bullpen…looks like that’s all for me this time around, catch you next time!