As I slowly trot towards producing my top 75 prospects list (yes, I know I keep teasing, my hope has always been mid-January), I have realized that my own views on prospects are sometimes quite off. My instincts, the prospect list I sat down and made myself after the season, has held up fairly strong, but I think two main surprises are worth writing about.

In September, I wrote an article entitled “Los Tres Enemigos”, about the threesome of Jeff Francoeur, Jeremy Hermida and Felix Pie. The last paragraph of this article reads as follows:

Barring injury, I don’t question that these three players will all be in the National League by 2007. Each should be great, though Hermida needs more power, Pie more polish and Francoeur more discipline. But age tends to help all three of those attributes, so I expect them all to start sliding towards stardom. And who knows, maybe my grouping will be grouped in the 2010 NL All-Star team together?

Since the age of 17, Pie has been hyped up by the media and Cubs organization alike. His story, of a very humbling beginning in the sport of baseball, was noteworthy enough to be remembered by lots of people. What we have fallen guilty to though, has been to look at these numbers, and assume that Pie was destined for the superstar fate of many raw Dominican players before him. What I am slowly coming to realize, is that is not true.

It first started to hit me last year that maybe Pie wasn’t quite the next Vladimir Guerrero, but better suited for a leadoff spot. I guess a .388 slugging percentage, even in the Midwest League, will do that to an evaluator. Maybe it was the fact that his home runs doubled in 74 less at-bats, but I continued to think quite highly of Pie. In a state of reflection, I have realized that my thinking of him is far overrated.

This is mainly because that when his .441 slugging impressed me this year, it was bloated. As was his .569 SLG in the Arizona Summer League, when he was put on the prospect map. And even this, so was his scarily low .388 slugging percentage. These numbers are higher because triples take at least 25% of Pie’s extra-base hits. In the AZL, they took up an astounding 39.4%.

The problem with these numbers, is that triples tend to go down when the level goes up. In the FSL, the average team hit 34.42 triples last season, where the average MLB team 29.93 in about 40 more games.

Pie does have insanely fast raw speed, which also led to his career-high 32 stolen bases last year. I do think that will transfer into a lot of triples, but probably not one every 43.1 at-bats, like he did in the Florida State League. Only two hitters, speedsters Carl Crawford and Chone Figgins, tripled at a higher rate last season. If we assume Pie to be in the next tier, the #3-7 speedsters, he’ll triple at a 1/50-55AB next year.

While I agree this won’t have a huge impact on his slugging, it will have some. His plate discipline isn’t that good, and he strikes out too much. To me, he profiles to be a .280/.340/.400 hitter in the Majors. Not terrible, but definitely lower than what many evaluators are predicting.

But so I’m not going too far on the ledge, let me say that this will not necessarily stay this way. Few players reach AA at the age of 20, so there is no denying Pie is special. The question, is how special.

To me, that same question currently exists for Carlos Quentin, former first-round pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks. While Pie is boasting a slugging highly based on triples, Quentin’s OBP is jacked on hit-by-pitches. This season, between the hitter-friendly California and Texas Leagues (and even more hitter-friendly Lancaster and El Paso stadiums), Quentin put together a .435 OBP.

In doing so, Carlos Quentin was hit by 43 pitches. If he did that in the Major Leagues, that would represent the second-highest total since 1900. Had Carlos dropped to normal high-Major numbers, say 15 HBP, his on-base percentage would be .404. Basically .031 points of OBP, at least, are reliant on being hit by pitches.

Like triples, hit by pitches go down as triples go up. While I did the calculations one day, I’ve since lost them, but I can promise that there is a real correlation between level and HBP, going from a lot during A-ball, to very few in the Majors. But at the same time, I don’t find it any coincidence that the same players are often at the top of the HBP leaderboards.

Ron Hunt, Don Baylor, Craig Biggio, Hughie Jennings. Nowadays, we have Jason Kendall and Jason LaRue. The same guys…always. Is this a talent?

To me, Quentin is most likely to be a .300/.375/.475 hitter in the Bigs. Again, it could be worse, depending on how much of a difference those Arizona minor league parks make.

OK, neither Pie nor Quentin in my top 40. Crazy?