Buried Treasure Top 100 Prospects: #1-10

1. Mike Trout 
Position: CF
Team: Los Angeles Angels

Justin Upton, B.J. Upton, Adrian Beltre, Andrew Jones, Edgar Renteria, Alex Rodriguez, Ivan Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Juan Gonzalez, and Gary Sheffield.  Along with Trout, those 10 players are the entirety of an exclusive club of players who hit a homerun during their respective age 19 seasons.   Excluding the Upton brothers, who are still in the midst of their careers, Trout will end up with at least 38.7 fWAR as long as he doesn’t finish as the ‘worst’ player on this list, behind Juan Gonzalez.  Using the same list of players (excluding the Upton brothers again), if Trout becomes an ‘average’ player, he will end his career with 67.9 fWAR.  Granted, hitting a homerun at a certain age is a seemingly arbitrary statistic, and it is to a degree, but getting to the majors that fast is impressive and indicative of incredible talent.  Trout managed to do that on the back of his impressive hit tool, good plate discipline, and blazing speed that allows him to be an elite defensive centerfielder.  As absurd as it sounds, 67.9 fWAR doesn’t seem too much of a stretch. 

The Pirates and Contract Extensions

What do Evan Longoria and Matt Moore
have to do with the Pirates and
Contract  Extensions? Click to find out!

Big news! The Pirates signed Andrew McCutchen to an extension! By now, whoever is reading this probably already knows.  It's awesome news.  Digging a bit further though, I'd like to comment on an interesting observation I had, specifically about contract extensions.

The McCutchen extension fell in line with two recent extensions that have created a model.  The Arizona Diamondbacks were able to sign Justin Upton followed by the Cincinnati Reds signing Jay Bruce to virtually identical contracts. Both players were like McCutchen, young outfielders going into the third year, their last year prior to arbitration.  Point being, the parallels are more than obvious.  That's not the only model though and it may not be the best.