Photo Credit: Scott Paulus
With the MLB trade deadline now just a week away last-minute transactions are likely to be the week’s top story. As teams negotiate their pennant race additions or subtractions, however, they might be well served to think about another recent transaction that largely went under the radar.
On Friday the Twins released former Brewers’ shortstop Orlando Arcia, who had been playing for them in AAA. Arcia, still just 31 years old, has played for three franchises since the start of the 2015 season and has been released or allowed to leave as a free agent from all of them. He’s played parts of eleven seasons in the majors but it’s possible his best was 2017, his first full campaign in the majors when he was 22 years old. Baseball Reference estimates his value at less than a win above replacement level in nine of his 11 seasons.
Before all of that, however, Arcia was one of the most valuable commodities in all of baseball. MLB Pipeline ranked him as the game’s #6 prospect and Baseball America had him #8 before the 2016 season, when the 21-year-old was about to make his major league debut. The former graded his hitting, running, throwing arm and fielding all at “plus” or above. All of that added up to a career where Arcia was a good defender in the majors but FanGraphs estimates his offensive value at 112 runs below average.
Valuable Contributor
To be clear, even if it’s over Arcia had a very good MLB career. He played for more than a decade, was an All Star, won a World Series with the 2021 Braves and was a valuable enough contributor to be included on seven different postseason rosters. He’s just well short of the level of hype and projected performance one might have expected from a prospect on his level.
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For better or for worse, baseball’s developmental process is different from every other professional sport and there’s been an entire industry built around evaluating, projecting, promoting and in some cases profiting from players who have yet to reach the pinnacle. It’s great for the sport that fans are excited about future generations of possible MLB stars. It’s perhaps an overreach, however, when it leads to MLB Pipeline calculating major league ETAs for 17-year-olds at the Brewers’ Dominican academy or fans paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for cards autographed by players who have yet to make MLB debuts.
Let’s go back to Arcia for a moment and look at the aforementioned list of MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects from 2016, when Arcia was #6. Including Arcia, 45 of the 100 players on that list are not in the majors right now and nine more are listed as being at the MLB level but have not played in an MLB game this season. To be clear, there are stars on this list. Aaron Judge, Corey Seager, Trea Turner, Josh Hader and more are among the future All Stars and award winners. But a decade out from the release of this list, more than half of them are done in the majors and many of them never got there at all.
Untouchable Top Prospects?
Many of those top prospects were likely “untouchable” at some point in their early careers. Longtime Brewers fans may remember the summer of 2012 when the Brewers were shopping for offers for potential future Hall of Fame pitcher Zack Greinke and one of their top targets was 19-year-old Rangers shortstop Jurickson Profar, who the Rangers refused to include in a deal. Without Greinke, the Rangers finished second by one game in the AL West and lost the Wild Card Game. Profar, meanwhile, went on to have a career very similar to Arcia’s before a late career breakout and a subsequent pair of suspensions for performance enhancing drugs. If they could go back and do it again the Rangers would almost certainly offer Profar for Greinke.
Scouting and player development is a critical part of building a successful MLB franchise, especially for organizations with smaller budgets and margins for error. The Brewers have perhaps been more successful with this aspect of the game in recent years than at any other point in franchise history, as many of the players guiding them towards another potential NL Central crown were signed or drafted and developed internally. The 2026 season might look entirely different if at some point in previous years the Brewers had opted to give up Brice Turang, Jackson Chourio or Jacob Misiorowski to add veteran help. It’s also worth noting, however, that prospects are not “sure things” and it’s sometimes worth the risk to move them in exchange for a player who can help your team turn a corner in the short term.
