In a recent post there was a lot of reflection about Gordon being listed as only our eighth best prospect and it got me thinking about how we look at these lists and what is the difference between #2 and #8.

Gordon at 8 is fine with me.I think his second half decline raised questions about the validity of the first half.Each year the reviews and reports seem to have a slightly less optimistic look at Gordon.It appears to me, if I combine the various TD and other reports that he will be a fine average major leaguer, but not a star.Which is fine, but it is nice to know that we actually have some others in the system now that have higher potential.

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The minors are so fascinating.How many players are in the minors in any one year and what percentage of them ever make the big leagues?According to a Wiki article there are 19 affiliated minor baseball leagues operate with 247 member clubs.That is amazing.Yahoo had one answer - 5856 which appears to be the high end and 2700 on the low estimates that I found.Considering there are 25 on the active rosters there are 750 major leaguers, if we look at the 40 man rosters there 1200 potential major league players available to each club.

https://www.blessyou...e-major-leagues gives even more insight into my questions.In the article they state that 90% of players who make it to the majors do so in their first five seasons - rule V time. In total, pitching and batting, ESPN rankings had 419 players with 1 or more WAR.I suspect that the majority of vacancies will come from the players below this, but some, like Pujols are contract protected.

This quest has me fascinated - the 2007 season, according to this article had 80 or the 244 players drafted in the first seven rounds making it to the majors and of those 33 never accumulated a WAR of 1 or more for their career - to date.

To emphasize a point made in another discussion, the difference between first round and later rounds is significant.In this 2007 draft class 21 of the players who made it to MLB were first round out of the 80 - a little more than one fourth.

To test this number, the 2006 draft class had 90 players make it and 23 were first rounders.The article goes much further, but I find the path of the baseball player to the majors is really difficult so any player that gets ranked on a team top ten or a league top 100 has already accomplished a lot.

So how many openings are there each year.Just because there is a good rookie on the list does not mean the team will give them a chance - there is always that free agent who has experience on their resume to block their paths.

​But this NY Times article looked at the average length of a players career and found it to be 5.6 years.

Less than half the rookies that come in play 5 years and only 1 percent play 20.

At the same time, we have career minor league players who are so persistent. Think about this 2014 article about a minor leaguer named Hessman - the eighth minor leaguer to accumulate 400 home runs. This is playing for the love of the game:

http://sabr.org/latest/hessman-becomes-eighth-minor-leaguer-hit-400-career-home-runs

In 2011

https://goodmenproject.com/sports/meet-americas-oldest-minor-leaguer/

Told about Andy Tracy - the oldest minor leaguer who played for Reno and was about to turn 38. "In 16 seasons, he’s played for the Crocs, the Hammerheads, and the Zephyrs. Hell, he’s even been an IronPig. All in all, he’s played for 11 minor league teams and one in Japan. He’s tallied 5,298 minor-league at-bats, playing in 1,511 minor-league games." It was his last year.

When I watch Bull Durham and listen to the philosophy of Crash Davis I think about all those struggling for what is a very narrow bottle neck in their career path.

​So congratulations to everyone on this list and those who are close.Good luck.