Honestly, it’s not looking much better for anyone else, either.
Last week, FanGraphs kicked off their Prospect Week for 2025. It’s a week of numerous articles providing excellent insight into FanGraphs and their view of prospects. The very first article they posted was one that was absolutely amazing for someone like me who isn’t always the best at understanding how to think about prospects.
First, let’s break down scouting grades for those of you who are unfamiliar. The scale goes from 20-80, which might seem like a weird range of numbers until you realize that 50 represents average and every 10 above or below is a standard deviation above and below. So it’s a scale with 50 set as the average that ranges up to three standard deviations away.
There are two important things to consider when reading such a scale. First, anything below 50 means below average. Second, a 60 is much better than a 50, a 70 much better than a 60, and an 80 is much better than a 70, An 80 is so impressive, in fact, that you will almost never see it appear. I’ve only ever seen an 80 once, on Elly De La Cruz’s speed evaluation. I’m sure there are others, but it’s very infrequent.
FanGraphs added a feature in the last few years called a Prospect Report for various players. It offers dual numbers for five categories in the format of 50/60. The first number tells you where that player currently is rated for that tool, the second where he is projected to end up as he progresses. But beyond that, FanGraphs also provides a Future Value field which uses the scouting scale to project how good a prospect is overall. A 50 is an average prospect, for example, with the same standard deviation rules outlined above.
That’s great! We could now tell of what quality a prospect was likely to be. But this year, FanGraphs finally broke down for us what outcomes those qualities lead to most often in a couple of easy-to-read tables on that linked article. The results are eye-opening. It might have seemed safe to assume that a 50-grade prospect was someone who most likely would become a starter at the big league level. But, according to this table, being a 50-grade prospect only means a player has a one-in-two chance of becoming an MLB starter or better, a quarter of such prospects will only ever be backups and the final quarter will wash out of baseball entirely. Something less than a quarter of those players will become above-average players or stars.
It gets even worse for players rated lower. The table only goes as low as 45-grade players, but that’s low enough to paint a frightening picture for the majority of prospects. Fully half of prospects at 45+ or 45 completely wash out of MLB without ever becoming even reliable backups.
As I wrote last week, I was curious if fans were overrating Carter Jensen as a prospect or undervaluing Gavin Cross because Baseball Trade Values sees them as roughly equivalent, value-wise. The answer, it turns out, is that we are probably over-estimating Jensen. And by a lot.
Per Jensen’s FanGraphs page, he has a future value of only 45***. Now that doesn’t mean he can’t become a starter or even a star. But, well, only 1% of all previous 45 FV prospects have become stars. But nine times out of ten, he won’t even become an above-average starter. He’s literally more likely to completely flame out than to ever become a major league player, and if he doesn’t he’s significantly more likely to become a backup than a starter, much less an above-average player in the vein of Salvador Perez.
Now, some of this is moot in the immediate response to last week’s trade proposals; the Angels signed Kenley Jansen to a new deal last week, so they’re not likely to be in the market for relievers. The Royals probably can’t swing any kind of trade with them anymore. But I know some people look at Jensen and Mitchell and worry that there won’t be room for both players to play on the MLB roster. That fear seems unlikely to be necessary.
FanGraphs’ Ben Clemons also provided a handy-dandy spreadsheet calculator that lets you plug in one to four prospect FVs and determine the likelihood that any of them because a starter. So I plugged in Jensen’s 45 FV and Blake Mitchell’s 45+ FV and got an 18.2% chance that even one of them will become an above-average player. The odds that both become at least starter-caliber players? 7.4%.
Jac Caglianone is the Royals’ consensus number-one prospect and for good reason. Unfortunately, FanGraphs gives him a Future Value of 50. Per their numbers, he’s slightly more likely never to be a meaningful contributor in the big leagues than he is to be a starter. (EDIT: I don’t know what I did with my math the first time, but it’s slightly more likely he’ll be at least a starter at 53%. Still basically a coin flip, but in a slightly more positive way.)
There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect or TINSTAAPP has long been a maxim among baseball fans. I’m beginning to think we need to make some sort of corollary to that, There Is No Such Thing As A Prospect It’s Safe To Fall In Love With or TINSTAAPISTFILW*. I’m not married to it, but the sentiment is what matters. Don’t get married to guys in the minor leagues. It’ll almost always end up in heartbreak.
*Yes, there are exceptions to the rules. FanGraphs has rated six position players in their sample with a 65 or higher Future Value, and five of them became at least MLB regulars. Three were 70 or higher and all became stars. But the acronym was wordy enough already and if you’re waiting on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.s and Adley Rutschmans, you’re going to be waiting for a while.**
**The only guy rated at an 80 in the timespan FanGraphs used was Wander Franco. Something something too good to be true.
***After I wrote this and just before it went live, FanGraphs updated Jensen to a 50 FV. So he projects to being more likely to succeed than when I wrote this, but the odds still aren’t great, and falling in love with him to the point where you refuse to upgrade the team because you won’t trade him specifically seems like a mistake to me.