MLB Announces "Spring Breakout" Prospect Showcase
Major League Baseball has announced that teams will have the opportunity to send their top prospects to compete in a series of exhibition games. This exhibition, named "Spring Breakout", is scheduled to take place March 14th-17th. These prospects will have a chance to play against each other as opposed to being late-game substitutions in a big league Spring Training game. This concept is pretty similar to both the Arizona Fall League and the Future's Game.
The main appeal for these games will be to showcase the top prospects for the 30 MLB organizations. Top prospects who aren't competing for a roster spot typically will be late substitutions to finish out a Spring Training game after the major league players are finished. They don't get much action in these games and are facing low level minor leaguers. Instead they may get a longer look against more appropriate competition for a few days. That many at-bats probably won't sway a decision for how an organization will develop their prospects.
While this showcase, there are questions that need to be answered. The main one is structuring the competition in this showcase, how many players from each organization and how many games played? The next one is how close to major league ready will these prospects be, would it be worthwhile for an organization to send a prospect who could make their Opening Day roster? Those might not be answered until the event kicks off in March.
In the Diamondbacks case, who would they send? Top prospect Jordan Lawlar would be an interesting case for them. Having already served time in the big leagues in the final four weeks plus the postseason, the D-backs top prospect should be in a competition to earn the starting shortstop job. It may be more worthwhile to have him face big league caliber pitching over those four days rather than prospects he's less likely to face during the season. Beyond him, the rest of their top prospects such as Tommy Troy, Ivan Melendez, or Yu-Min Lin could very well end up participating.
The D-backs will have the unique opportunity for fans to be able to watch their top prospects participate, as most facilities are within an hour of Salt River Fields. In the meantime we'll have to wait to see how successful this showcase ends up being.
