The Marlins haven’t made the playoffs in a decade or had a winning season since 2009; morever, their record has declined every season  since they last broke even, culminating in a 100-loss season last year in spite of the presence of feared slugger Giancarlo Stanton and a solid pitching staff led by phenom Jose Fernandez. The spell of losing understandably puts pressure on Miami’s farm system to produce, and one member of their organization upon whom a considerable amount rests is 2013 first-rounder Colin Moran. A highly-touted college third baseman out of UNC, Moran was selected sixth overall in the past draft and was polished enough to immediately flirt with the .300 mark in full-season ball; he also was deemed polished enough for the Arizona Fall League after just 42 games of professional experience. In this piece, I’ll look at how Moran projects and if he can eventually help a Marlins team that hit just .231/.293/.335 this past season.

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To paraphrase (horribly butcher?) A Tale of Two Cities, prospects are the best of times and the worst of times for ottoneu owners. At least based on the number of questions I get about them.

The joy of ottoneu is you can sign that Double-A SS with the big bat and hope he develops into a star. The problem is how to find the right prospect. For every Mike Trout, there is an Andy Marte. Actually, for every Trout, there are about a billion Marte’s. And the chances are you, like me, are not a prospect evaluator, which makes it awfully hard to tell the difference.

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One of my strongest beliefs as a prospect/minor league writer is that there is far too much absolutism in most discussions of prospects in the online community. Part of the reason for this is simply a matter of demand–as you read about a minor league player (or, really, any player) at a place like FanGraphs or RotoGraphs, you’re likely interested in some sort of bottom line about how good the player is and might be. As such, there is a lot of pressure on the arbiters of the players to come up with a concrete answer–to make an actual prediction of their futures. In reality, though, prospecting is all about shades of gray, particularly in the low minors, which are my main focus. Just about every player in full-season ball has something going for them, but likewise, almost every player below Double-A has several aspects which need refinement before he has a chance at big league success. Predicting the eradication of those problems and the amount to which the strengths are realized is largely an exercise in probability, not one of guessing “good,” “bad,” or “okay” and clinging to it…to say nothing of the factors of injuries, regression, and the like. Any glance at a top prospect list from five years ago, regardless of the authors or their credibility, should drive this point home soundly–many of the top players go on to struggle, whereas several off the list entirely go on to have excellent careers.

For all of my relativistic outlook, though, occasionally I run into a player who’s just so impressive that my mind can’t help but jump directly to concrete thoughts of stardom. Of the couple hundred pitchers I saw in person last year, nobody evoked those thoughts more strongly than Cardinals pitching prospect Alex Reyes.

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Last week, I wrote about Eddie Butler and how Colorado’s volatile starting rotation could open the door for Butler, and fellow prospect Jonathan Gray, to contribute earlier than expected. That got me thinking about how Matthew Wisler is in a similar situation with the Padres, especially following the news that Cory Luebke will miss all of 2014.

Ian Kennedy, one of baseball’s most durable pitchers over the last several years, is assured a spot in the rotation, as are Andrew Cashner and Josh Johnson. Cashner finally managed to stay healthy for a full season last year, and was quite good in his 175 innings, finishing the season with a 3.09 earned run average and 1.13 walks plus hits per inning. The problem with Cashner is that he had thrown a total of 316.2 innings in his five previous professional seasons.

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Few Low-A teams have ever had quite the array of young position-player talent as the 2013 Hickory Crawdads–six of their nine everyday players ranked in Baseball America’s Rangers top 25 prospects coming into the season, and a seventh, Ryan Rua, came out of nowhere to lead the minors in home runs for much of the season…until he was promoted to Double-A and passed by fellow Crawdad Joey Gallo.

While Gallo’s race to the minor league home run championship in his first full season was probably the biggest story of the many intriguing Hickory developments, the heralded slugger wasn’t the highest-drafted member of Hickory’s vaunted group of teenagers, being picked ten selections behind teammate Lewis Brinson in the 2012 draft (39th to 29th). In the fight for attention on such a stacked roster, Brinson’s 2013 campaign got somewhat overshadowed by Gallo’s incredible power output, Jorge Alfaro’s ascension up catching prospect leaderboards, Nick Williams‘ big numbers, C.J. Edwards becoming a force on the mound (and subsequently the key to the Matt Garza deal), Rua’s out-of-nowhere emergence, and other stories. He still won plenty of praise for his tools, hit 21 homers, and posted a solid triple-slash line, but also raised eyebrows by striking out 191 times, one short of Harold Riggins‘ minor league lead.

Having seen Brinson in 17 games this past season, I’m going to use this post to dissect his current skillset and 2013 performance, hopefully lending some clarity to a rather extreme set of numbers.

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The top four spots in the Rockies’ rotation, barring injury, seem pretty much set for the start of the 2014 season, but most of them carry significant risk. The exception is Jhoulys Chacin; other than a pectoral injury that cost him 3 1/2 months in 2012, he has been an effective, durable pitcher over the bulk of his seven professional seasons.

But then you’ve got Jorge de la Rosa, who has pitched more than 130 innings in just two of seven seasons since he transitioned to a starter full-time in the majors. Brett Anderson hasn’t thrown more than 83.1 frames since 2010. Tyler Chatwood is a decent, if thoroughly unspectacular, back-of-the-rotation starter.

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The Cardinals’ first-round pick in the 2011 Draft, Kolten Wong, is expected to begin the 2014 season as the team’s starting second baseman. Coming into last year, Wong was a near-consensus Top 100 prospect, and he was very impressive at Triple-A Memphis in 2013. At age 22, Wong posted a .303/.369/.466 slash line in 463 plate appearances before earning a call up to the majors.

Wong struggled mightily in his first taste of major-league action, scuffling to a paltry .153/.194/.169 line. However, we’re only dealing with a sample size of 62 plate appearances, and those were spread over 32 games. At one point, Wong went 24 days between starts in St. Louis, and when he did start, he often did not finish the game. It’s difficult to expect any player, not to mention a 22-year-old rookie, to produce much of anything with such inconsistent usage.

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Last week, I wrote about George Springer and his complete demolition of minor-league pitching. This week, I’d like to take a look at one of Springer’s Triple-A teammates, Jon Singleton. Coming off a .284/.396/.497 season in Double-A in 2012, Singleton was featured in the top third of most Top 100 prospect lists last year, including here at FanGraphs.

At the time, Singleton was absolutely worth the hype. There aren’t a whole lot of players with as much raw power potential as Singleton has shown; he’s a batting-practice monster with jaw-dropping pull power, and it was starting to translate in-game as well. His isolated power, which was .143 in 525 High-A plate appearances in 2011, jumped to .213 in 555 plate appearances as a 20-year-old in Double-A, and he hit 21 homers, 27 doubles and four triples. I’ve always loved his swing; it’s got some natural lift to it that pairs well with his upper-body strength and produces some very loud contact.

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I’ll cut to the chase right from the start: George Springer is worth drafting in mixed re-draft leagues in 2014. Even if he doesn’t start the year on the major-league roster, he has the potential to be an impact player from the moment he arrives in the bigs.

I saw Springer play quite a bit last year, both in the Double-A Texas League and in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. It’s hard to describe how much Springer stood out from his competition at both of those levels. I guess I could just point to the fact that his weighted offense was about 75% above league-average in both leagues, or that he hit 37 home runs and stole 45 bases on the year.

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Everybody loves a sleeper–a player who seems primed to break out but who few pay attention to. Predicting a prospect breakout a) is fun and b) gives an evaluator some credibility, and in fantasy baseball, grabbing a player on the cheap and watching him soar to usefulness is a great way to find success.

While the White Sox minor league system has not been considered anywhere near an elite group in the past several years, they have managed to accumulate a number of sleeper successes. Until 2013, this allowed the major league team to stay competitive, supplementing a veteran core with solid performances from unheralded sources. While the team struggled in 2013, the trend continued, with Marcus Semien, Erik Johnson, and Daniel Webb all upping their stock considerably throughout the 2013 season and reaching the majors despite opening the year with no upper-minors experience.

In a system with little other places to look for positive thoughts other than the next wave of potential sleepers, one player who many analysts point to as a sleeper to watch is righthanded pitcher Chris Bassitt. Our own Marc Hulet ranked the lanky hurler as the organization’s eleventh-best prospect. But how good might Bassitt become?

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