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PORT ST. LUCIE — As inexact science goes, ranking prospects makes weather forecasting look infallible.

Yet, simply making it into a top 100 list from, say, Baseball America, MLB.com or Baseball Prospectus tends to sanctify a prospect despite lots of history that screams to use these rankings judiciously as guideposts, not bibles. One of my personal favorite pastimes is to see a media member or fan passionately argue that a prospect they have never seen lift an arm or swing a bat should not be traded based on a practice with all the precision of an NFL mock draft (which you all are again about to take too seriously).

The reality is major league baseball is tough — doh. So most players do not fulfill their high-end projections. Yet, the buildup in hope is such that it feels like a fall, a disappointment.

Perhaps the only item in baseball more unreliable is to trust exhibition statistics. As one veteran scout bemoaned Friday, “Spring training is an illusion.”