When Mike Trout broke into the minor leagues as a 17-year-old in the Angels system, he batted .360 with a .506 slugging percentage in rookie-level Arizona. That was in 2009. By the following season, he was on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospect list, climbing all the way to the second highest ranked spot by 2012.
Obviously, Trout proved to be a prospect with real potential in the major leagues. But not every prospect is like that. For every Mike Trout, there is a player who falls off the map, only remembered on archived prospect ranking lists.