{"id":682632,"date":"2026-05-20T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682632\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T20:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:13:09","slug":"mlb-mailbag-prospects-rangers-buxton-abrams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682632\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Mailbag: Prospects, Rangers, Buxton, Abrams"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s mailbag gets into success rates for top-five prospects, the Rangers’ woeful offense, Byron Buxton<\/a>‘s willingness to accept a trade, and possible CJ Abrams<\/a> suitors.<\/p>\n

Don asks:<\/p>\n

Of the Mariners’ top drafted-or-or-traded for hitting prospects, three have been outright failures (Dustin Ackley<\/a>, Jarred Kelenic<\/a>, J\u00e9sus Montero<\/a>) and only two (A-Rod and Junior) lived up to expectations. Is the M’s experience typical of other teams, or do the M’s simply have bad vibes?<\/p>\n

I guess what I’m asking is what’s the success record for, say, the top five prospects each year?<\/p>\n

Let’s assess the likelihood of success for a Baseball America<\/a> preseason top five prospect!\u00a0 For this mini-study, I decided to end with the year 2019.\u00a0 That way, we’re capturing players who have mostly had their chance to make a Major League impact, particularly within their six-year control period.<\/p>\n

There is subjectivity to this process, but a sample of around 50 different players feels appropriate.\u00a0 To reach that total, I had to look at the time period of 2007-19, since many players are ranked top five in multiple years.\u00a0 For what it’s worth, Ackley fell outside this sample because he topped out at #11, while Kelenic was omitted because his highest prospect ranking was in 2021 at #4.<\/p>\n

Jesus Montero<\/a> is on here, while Alex Rodriguez<\/a> and Ken Griffey Jr.<\/a> are not because I didn’t extend the study that far back.<\/p>\n

My way of assessing this is to look at the player’s FanGraphs<\/a> WAR for his first six years of team control.\u00a0 Finding that window for each player requires some manual legwork, which is why I didn’t make the sample larger.\u00a0 Check out my data here<\/a>!<\/p>\n


\n Unlock Subscriber-Exclusive Articles Like This One With a Trade Rumors Front Office Subscription<\/p>\n


\n Access weekly subscriber-only articles by Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams, and Anthony Franco.
\n Join exclusive weekly live chats with Anthony.
\n Remove ads and support our writers.
\n Access GM-caliber tools like our MLB Contract Tracker <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week’s mailbag gets into success rates for top-five prospects, the Rangers’ woeful offense, Byron Buxton‘s willingness to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-682632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}