TINSTAAPP

One of the acronyms that gets thrown around during discussion of baseball prospects is TINSTAAPP - There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. It is obviously not literally true, but there is a lot of truth about it. There are so many things that can de-rail pitchers on the journey to the Majors. Pitchers are much more susceptible to injury than position players are, for one thing. For another, control is something that can develop late or not at all.

In any event, John Sickels is taking a look today at all of top pitching prospects from 1993, and it confirms - again - the wisdom of that position.

If someone said to you in 1993, "I will give you all of the top pitching prospects, as determined by informed experts, in Double-A and Triple-A," you'd be ecstatic. Surely there'd be a top-notch Number One starter in there somewhere.

But the result would be a starting rotation of Steve Trachsel, Aaron Sele, Rick Helling, James Baldwin, and Jason Bere. Your closer would be Steve Karsay, the rest of the bullpen would be something like Van Poppel, Watson, White, Torres, and Lopez.