I absolutely love this series! It's refreshing to get a realistic look at what went wrong with a player throughout his journey in the minors, and majors in some cases.

From your experience is it easier for someone like Tate to improve his #want tool, than it would be for someone like Smoak to fix his swing or approach?

Jason, please do all of the prospects ever. Just spit out a new article every couple of hours. Thank you.

Shades of Sean Burroughs?

Description of Donovan Tate reminded me of Michael Jordan, the baseball player.

The thing about Tate, from the perspective of the peanut gallery, is that he just sounded like a sure-fire bust from the moment we heard of him. So he's tall and athletic but has no real baseball ability? It sounded like one of those guys in the NBA draft every year who's 6'10" with a 38" vertical and a 9" wingspan, who can't shoot or handle or rebound or pass or defend. He was (is?) basically the Marcus Haislip of baseball, and I think that's why a lot of people were pretty quick to write him off.

So his performance in 2011 was really encouraging, granting the small sample. His K/BB was close to 1 and a K% of < 20% ain't too bad at all. Unfortunately for him and the Padres, his K% spiked (or perhaps, rebounded) this year against A-ball pitching. It sure sounds like that comes from the basic weakness, his inability to make consistent contact, and that's a scary mountain to have to climb. Still, per your piece on tools goofs with poor early performance, that 2011 season gives at least some hope that he might figure it out. Bill Hall, I recall, sandwiched a decent year between two crappy ones before taking off.

Still, I don't really understand why you'd take this sort of player #3 overall.

I love the choice to use the phrase "passing drug tests."

Whoa, when did #want get the official mouse-over definition treatment?!? Very cool, and much deserved.

I have been following Ft Wayne outfielder, Kyle Gaedele since high school and see he's really struggling his 1st yr in professional ball after 3 stellar seasons at Valparaiso. Have you seen him, or heard about what's going on with him? Love the Up and In podcast!

Love this series. In re nominees, I'll put forward Reid Brignac -- what a weird trajectory his career has had!

For some reason I always think Cameron Maybin should be a fair comp (same team, same position, both athletic), but the skills are different, and Maybin actually hit in the minors.