Pete Parise couldn’t even make TheCardinalNation.com’s 2010 Top 40 Prospect List, but what do we care? Plenty of prospects never make it to Major League Baseball, and many that do, don’t last very long. Wikipedia defines prospect in its relation to sports as any player whose rights are owned by a professional team, but who has yet to play a game for the team. Prospects can sometimes be assigned to farm teams. But not every player in an organization gets the moniker of prospect. More likely, the term is thrown around to predict the possibility of future success for individual players. I’d prefer my guy shows his skill on the field instead of have people behind the glass tell me that my guy has a possibility of future success.
Pete Parise is that kind of guy. He wasn’t even drafted in the 50 round MLB draft. How can you call that kind of guy a “prospect”? But again, who cares? He is down in Jupiter right now, fighting for an opportunity to start the season in Major League Baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals. And while a year ago, many people did not know if he would even start above Double-A in 2010, some people think he has a chance to break camp in the Big Leagues.
Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is one of the head honchos who covers the Cardinals. He lists Parise in his top 5 Cardinals prospects to follow this Spring Training. Whether Parise is or is not a prospect, he is someone to keep track of leading up to the season. As Goold notes in his piece,
An underrated righty who hasn’t been heralded in the multitude of prospect rankings, Parise earned a nonroster invitation the old-fashioned way — he earned it. The bulldog righty sports a quality sinker, and he seized the closer job with Pacific Coast League champ Memphis last season.
One reply on “Prospect Or Not, Pete Parise Is One To Watch”
He was the best Relief pitcher with Ponce in the Puerto Rico Baseball League, arguably the best pitcher in the Caribbean series, with teams full of Major leaguers and he still manages to pitch like a All-star against the Caribbean where most of the top “Prospect” of the MLB play. He has earned the right to play indeed.