Or Jeff Francouer when he showed he had no ability to tell a ball from a strike as he put up hilariously bad numbers in the major leagues for 3 seasons. Or Brandon Wood who hasn't hit outside the PCL in 6 years. Francoeur's plate discipline alone doesn't preclude him from being a successful player (look at Kemp, Soriano, Crawford, CarGo, Hart, Pence, ...) and Wood's defense at 3B has been good enough he could still hit his AAA MLE of .293 obp/.416 slg and be an above-average player where are you going with this? my central premise was that these guys were underperforming their potential. Alex Gordon had 0.1 WAR the last two seasons, getting oft-demoted and i was (outwardly) hoping like hell we would heavily pursue him That it's a lot easier to see these as guys to pursue in hindsight. Kotchman and Francouer haven't been prospects in a long time. How many major league ABs before a guy is no longer considered a former prospect, and instead is a mediocre major leaguer? (Or worse in Francouer's case.) You've got 2300 major league PAs of 720 OPS from Kotchman and you want to pick him up because BA rated him highly 6 years ago. You've got 3400 major leauge PAs of 730 OPS from Francouer, and you want to pick him because he had a good 250 ABs 7 years ago.