Thanks
to Becca Deragisch, Leslie Nelson, Daniel Chu, and Steven Nagareda, we
were able to put together a website that put the original blog to
shame. Continuing to get positive results, Adam has taken Project
Prospect on as a part-time adventure. He recently attended the
Futures Game in San Francisco as a credentialed member of the media,
and traveled to the Arizona Fall League last November to meet players
and coaches.
Project Prospect hopes to provide you with
useful ranking information as well as unique interviews, feature
articles, and fun/interesting columns. Please contact Adam at adamf@projectprospect.com if you have any questions.
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To
explain our interest in prospects and our ranking philosophies, here's
the first article that Adam wrote for the blog (9/7/2006):
Let me start by saying that I purchased an 8x10 autographed picture of Philadelphia Phillies Marlon Byrd off of ebay in 2003.
I heard that Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn was
mentoring Byrd and spoke highly of him. So, primarily going by Gwynn's
word, I latched onto the Marlon Byrd is going to be amazing bandwagon -
it had a short list of members.
Byrd's picture is
still one of my favorites in my collection. It serves as an 8x10
reminder that I was horribly wrong about a prospect - and Byrd's amazing story.
My
prospect interest was brought to life when I watched the All-Star
Futures game in 2003. Grady Sizemore won the game's MVP award that year
and left a major impression on me; now he is doing the same for fans
across the country.
But in all honesty, had Sizemore not been awarded MVP, I wouldn't have paid a ton of attention to him.
I believe that as much as half of finding prospects is luck. You've
heard the stories about scouts going to watch one player and ending up
impressed by another. On a totally different level, I became a David
Wright fan when Dallas McPherson and Andy Marte were both already owned
in my keeper league.
But while I'm a big fan of any source that is giving me credible information on prospects, I like to have a sense of autonomy. That's where Project Prospect comes in.
I will be wrong about many prospects in the future - P.S. you can add Jason Phillips to my track record of bad picks, no 8x10 of him though.
My goal with Project Prospect is to simply learn to be wrong about prospects less often. And hopefully, I can help you while you help me along the way.
My prospect adventures are currently bound by my Three Golden Rules:
2) Players can join elite prospect tiers before they have played a full season of professional baseball. I'm not going to wait for Travis Snider to get 260 at-bats in the minors before I call him a top prospect so long as I have sufficient reason to think he belongs in that rank. Unearthing prospects is largely about who can find a player and determine that he is going to be an impact major leaguer first.
3) Half of finding prospects is luck - ok maybe not that much but a lot. Prospect hunting is fun and challenging because there are so many differing opinions. Athough my tone may not always show it, I have a lot of respect for anyone who logically - in some form or another - reaches his or her own conclusions about who the top baseball prospects on this globe are.
Adam Foster
Project Prospect Founder
