Derailed careers: which injured prospect do you regret the most?

[Mizerooskie]

Loewen pretty easily for me.

Showed the most promise at the MLB level, IMO

[Ohfan67]

Loewen. I don't think Riley's talent matched the hype and certainly not his attitude, but maybe I'm just remembering through dung colored lenses. Loewen seemed the real deal until his injury.

[LookinUp]

Chorye Spoone's Frederick run was pretty epic. He had all the makings of a really good ML starter and he wasn't that far away. Based on production, I feel like he was closer than any of the others.

[Hank Scorpio]

Matt Riley and it's not even close.

He was a bit of a loose cannon, but they ruined that kid's arm.

[skanar]

I'm not old enough to know a lot about Matt Riley, but the first guy I thought of when reading the title (and he's not on Frobby's list) was Hayden Penn. He was on the BA Top 100 list twice, but it always seemed like just when he was about to put it all together he'd break an arm tripping over the clubhouse steps or something ridiculous like that.

Brandon Erbe would have been a great story, I always had a soft spot for Jesse Beal, and Aaron Wirsch had some pretty over-the-top reviews from respected people (I believe "best curveball since Mussina" was one thing I read shortly after he was drafted).

[Hank Scorpio]

I'm not old enough to know a lot about Matt Riley, but the first guy I thought of when reading the title (and he's not on Frobby's list) was Hayden Penn. He was on the BA Top 100 list twice, but it always seemed like just when he was about to put it all together he'd break an arm tripping over the clubhouse steps or something ridiculous like that.

Brandon Erbe would have been a great story, I always had a soft spot for Jesse Beal, and Aaron Wirsch had some pretty over-the-top reviews from respected people (I believe "best curveball since Mussina" was one thing I read shortly after he was drafted).

Riley dominated in a Bundy-esque fashion over a longer period of time as a high school kid in the Sally League.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=riley-001mat

Threw 177 innings as a 19 year old and fried his arm.

[skanar]

Riley dominated in a Bundy-esque fashion over a longer period of time as a high school kid in the Sally League.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=riley-001mat

Threw 177 innings as a 19 year old and fried his arm.

Wow, that's awful. Those Frederick numbers are eerily similar to Bundy's this past year too. And people were complaining about the IP limits they put Bundy on?!? When you have a cautionary tale like this, it seems almost impossible to be too careful.

[QSII]

Hale had the Want To, and tried to come back after several different arm injuries.

[DrungoHazewood]

Here's a list of some prospects who have had serious injury problems since the late '90's or so. Of these, which are your biggest regrets? Who did you have really high hopes for? I'm going to include on this list some guys who made it to the majors, but never really got going due to injuries. And, some guys who are still in our MiL system and still have a chance to beat the odds.

Chris Smith

Beau Hale

Matt Riley

Adam Loewen

Val Majewski

Brandon Erbe

Chorye Spoone

Aaron Wirsch

Cameron Coffey

Dan Klein

Ryan Berry

Jesse Beal

Matt Hobgood

Tyler Townsend

Trent Mummey

I'll take Val Majewski. I followed his progress pretty closely for goofy, trivial reasons: he was born 10 years to the day after me. Just when he was on the cusp of being a real major leaguer he got hurt. You know, he's still active, or at least was last year. He's 31, and has spent the last 4-5 years bounding between Indy ball and AA/AAA. He had a really bad 2012, but he's only a year removed from a .950 OPS in 36 games at Round Rock. It's not completely out of the question he could get back to the show.

And here's a name for the old-timers: Pete Stanicek. That kid was dyamite at 2B coming up through the minors in '85-87. He could have been another BRob. Got hurt in AAA in '88, and kept getting injured after that. That was a tough loss.

Pete Stanicek is my all time favorite failed Oriole prospect. He had some silly lines in the minors in the mid-to-late 80s. Like an .855 OPS, .438 OBP, and 77 steals/17 caught with Hagerstown in A ball. And .856 with 38 steals the next year. This was in the era where the O's had the infamous "two DHs and a LFer" outfield of Lynn, Gerhart, and Sheets, so Stanicek looked like he'd been acquired from the Olympic track and field team.

But he was a little old for his leagues, then broke down and was out of baseball by age 28.

His brother, Steve, strangely enough was also born on my birthday, had a couple cups of coffee with the Brewers and Phillies, and before we really understood the effects of altitiude on baseballs he had some crazy .350 BA/1.000 OPS years at Denver and El Paso.

[NewMarketSean]

Matt Riley and it's almost not even close.

Adam Loewen is second but even if those guys panned out the Orioles still would have been awful.

[hoosiers]

Matt Riley and Chris Smith were hurt by the Orioles so, IMO, that's really tough. We never saw what Smith could do, but Riley put up ridiculous minor league numbers and was very likely on the verge of become a major league SP of the 1-3 variety. The attrition rate among pitchers is awful - so the injuries to Loewen, Spoonye, Erbe etc, are not a terrible surprise - I just find it more difficult to stomach that the Os handling of Riley/Smith directly and negatively impacted their careers.

John Stephens might have been a very good major league SP if not for his injury.

[LookinUp]

I'm not an insider so this is pure speculation, but I've always assumed that it was the O's who mishandled all of those guys. There were questions on this site about Erbe's mechanics for years before he went down.

[glenn__davis]

I'll add a vote to the Loewen camp.

Though I really would have liked to have seen what Beau Hale could have done had he stayed healthy.

[DrungoHazewood]

I'm not an insider so this is pure speculation, but I've always assumed that it was the O's who mishandled all of those guys. There were questions on this site about Erbe's mechanics for years before he went down.

I'd assume that the O's instruction and guidance for these guys was not good. You'd have to anger a lot of baseball gods to have bad luck account for the Orioles farm system's lack of production from the 1985-2010 era. But nevertheless, you could expect a very good farm system to have a 50% or 75% attrition rate among top pitching prospects. Some pitchers are good because they have wacky, high-stress mechanics, and the process of making them try to look like Tom Glavine or Tom Seaver could ruin them, too.

[DrungoHazewood]

Anybody remember Alvie Shepherd? He was the O's first-round pick in 1995. Maybe the most ridiculous first rounder of them all. In '95 he played for the University of Nebraska, and split time between DHing and closing (if you want to call it that). He was one of the Cornhusker's better hitters, clearly not in the same class as Darin Erstad, but still, he was 2nd on the team with 12 homers, and tied for the team lead with 22 doubles. He was a corn-fed Nebraska boy straight out of central casting, 6' 7" easily his listed 235.

As a pitcher he threw 38 innings, allowed 47 hits, 30 runs, walked 22, struck out 40, threw 14 wild pitches, hit four batters, and had a 6.57 ERA. So the O's drafted him as a pitcher. In the first round. Presumably because of his size and his 95 mph fastball.

Predictably, his minor league career highlight was winning a Baysox hog-calling contest in 1997. Shame the baseball didn't work out.