We review MLB.com’s Top 50 Prospects of 2010. As we look through the list, think about how many of these guys you’d give up for an established superstar like Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado.
With big names such as Kris Bryant and Nolan Arenado being dangled like carrots in the trade market, it presents an interesting conversation. Fans begin arguing over whether their team should exchange prized prospects for established star power. In the spirit of speculation, we take a look back at the top 50 prospects prior to the 2010 season and how they all have fared.
Conspicuously absent from this list of prospects is perhaps the best player of the past decade, Mike Trout. Keep in mind, Trout had just been drafted in the late-first round of the 2009 draft and would be appropriately ranked as the top prospect the following year.
MLB.com recently re-visited this list and re-ranked it based on actual production. Some of the names that didn’t crack the original top 50 prospects list back in 2010 show what an inexact science this can be. It also reveals the risk in trading prospects that aren’t necessarily your team’s highest-ranked at that time. Below is a list of notable players that were unranked in the 2010 Top 50 Prospects list. I have included the year they were drafted or signed to a major league organization in parenthesis.
*Players drafted in June of 2009 were omitted from the following list.
- Josh Donaldson (2007)
- Jose Altuve (2007)
- Freddie Freeman (2007)
- Corey Kluber (2007)
- Lorenzo Cain (2004)
- Anthony Rizzo (2007)
- Starling Marte (2007)
- Justin Turner (2005)
Next, we will go over some key names and interesting individual and collective statistics from this group of prospects. Then we will provide an overview of all fifty prospects and how they have each performed since the list was published.
On the next slide, we’ll begin reviewing some of the more intriguing statistics we have compiled upon examination of this group of 2010’s top prospects.