Of course, Cecchini’s 2015 was the stuff nightmares are made of and, rather ironically, the opposite of how well his brother Gavin performed for the New York Mets. In his second tour at Triple-A, Cecchini’s offense completely fell apart. To start, Cecchini — an on-base fiend in the lower minors — posted a .286 OBP against not-quite-big-league competition, and supplemented that with a .296 slugging percentage. When he hit, and that wasn’t often, he sure didn’t hit for power. When he didn’t hit, he didn’t walk all that much either.

If Cecchini were particularly young for the International League, perhaps you could write off his Pawtucket numbers, or chalk it up to injury. Unfortunately, Garin is a reasonably healthy 24-year-old who posted a nigh-disturbing -2.2 WARP in Pawtucket. To put that in perspective, Garin was more than two wins worse than the type of guy that any Triple-A team can find on the open market. Most of that is due to his horrid .209 True Average (TAv) — remember, .260 is roughly equivalent to league-average — but the rest is due to the fact that he’s been playing the less difficult defensive position of corner outfield rather than third base at times. Yeah, his defense isn’t so hot either.

Here’s a quote from BP’s July 29th “What the Scouts are Saying” column, which illustrates the nut of Cecchini’s 2015: “Playing the outfield and looks dead to me. I am very underwhelmed watching him this year.”

Not awesome.

Next year will be Cecchini’s age-25 season, and things, frankly, aren’t looking so good. He’s on the cusp of losing his prospect status, and may be a guy who’s looking for a new home in 2016. Don’t expect to find him on a Sox Top 10 prospects list … in fact, don’t expect to find him on any team’s Top 10 Prospects list, unless he somehow ends up in Anaheim.

I don’t point out how bad Cecchini’s been out of some weird sense of schadenfreude, but to illustrate the point that some prospects tend to wash out before having any sort of impact in the big leagues. It’s a fact of life, and it’s not one of my favorite things. (Growing up following the Mets during “Generation K” has scarred me permanently.) I sincerely hope Garin figures out how to be a big league regular at some point, but the odds don’t look good today.

So here’s the bright side, at least for the greater Red Sox nation: Cecchini washing out appears to be something of an anomaly over the past few years, not the rule.

Look at the current Boston roster, and you’ll see guys at critical positions playing damn good baseball. Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Blake Swihart all play mission-critical roles in the present (ugh!) and the future (yay!) of the franchise. Henry Owens and Eduardo Rodriguez … and maybe even Brian Johnson(!) … look like they can hold down consistent rotation spots.

In fact, if you were to examine the 2014 Baseball Prospectus Boston Red Sox Top 10 Prospect list, you’d find that six of the ten players on that list (Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, Owens, Swihart, Betts, and Christian Vazquez) look like really nice big leaguers already. Eduardo Rodriguez didn’t make the Sox’s list, but he was high up on the Orioles’ list. Jason Parks used to write that Prospects Will Break Your Heart, but precious few of the guys from Boston’s minor league system (Bryce Brentz, maybe Matt Barnes) have done that recently.

I wondered how true this might be of other teams with solid-to-great farm systems, much like the one Boston’s had for the past couple of years. I took a quick look at the Rangers, the Astros, the Cubs and the Twins.

The Cubs are a prime example of a team that has gotten a ton of early success from their prospects … and taking a look at their 2014 list of top guys shows us a number of players who are already contributors, much like the Sox. There’s Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler on the list, and Javier Baez, who’s starting to come on (finally). Plus, Addison Russell was added mid-way through the season, and Arodys Vizcaino has finally turned into a late-inning reliever, albeit for the Braves. At the same time, the Cubs feature more than a couple of guys who have watched their stocks fall (Albert Almora, or Arismendy Alcantara, anyone) or are still too far away (Dan Vogelbach, Pierce Johnson). All in all, the Cubs have done pretty well.

The Rangers converted some of their prospect depth (Jorge Alfaro and Nick Williams) from the 2014 list into Cole Hamels, and Rougned Odor, Chi Chi Gonzalez and Joey Gallo look strong. The Astros are getting big contributions from Carlos Correa, George Springer, and Lance McCullers, but may take hits on Mark Appel and Jonathan Singleton. And the Twins may have hit on Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano (duh!), as well as Eddie Rosario and Jose Berrios (maybe!), but they haven’t quite fared as well as the Sox across the board yet.

The trick is to acquire enough good-to-great prospects that you can absorb the disappointment when one or more don’t look so hot any more.

The Red Sox’s success with young players has mirrored or exceeded these other squads, not to mention the fact that Boston has been able to reload their farm system as well as, or better than, all these other teams — without selling off major parts.

Every one of these other stocked farm systems has seen a position player, if not multiple players, fail to achieve the lofty goals set for them. Alcantara, Luis Sardinas, Singleton, Josmil Pinto … it almost never fails. Some prospects just don’t really pan out, at least the way we expect. Garin Cecchini is just part of this process.

It’s also still possible that Cecchini could turn out to be useful — I just wouldn’t put a whole lot of money on it. I quickly reviewed the last few years of hitters who performed as poorly as Garin in the International League and played the outfield. Do you remember Pawtucket’s very own Che-Hsuan Lin (2012)? How about Ronald Bermudez (2011 and 2013)? They hit about as well those seasons as Cecchini did this year, and they’ve not exactly lit the world on fire. Cecchini certainly might not either.

Not every top prospect makes it, so it stands to reason that some of the middle-of-the-road guys are bound for failure too. The trick is to acquire enough good-to-great prospects that you can absorb the disappointment when one or more don’t look so hot any more. Cecchini’s career isn’t over yet, and there’s still a chance that he could end up as a useful big-league cog. But even if he doesn’t — and it really doesn’t look like he will at this point — Sox fans should be happy they’ve struck gold on so many other players.

Photo by Kim Klement/USA Today Sports Images

We’ll start with what we have. Mike Napoli’s brutal start to the season seemed to conclude in mid-May with an equally brutal stomping of the Rangers, followed by a personal takedown of the Angels. Napoli took the opportunity to resuscitate his season against his previous employers, hitting .429/.500/1.190 in six games against them. That last number is not his OPS, it’s his slugging percentage. It looked like the Napoli of 2013 was back, and the Napoli of 2011 was taking occasional ABs too.

But then the Angels and Rangers left town and the good versions of  Napoli left with them. Since those series, Napoli has hit .193/.299/.303: bad for a glove-first utility infielder, horrendous for a slugging first baseman. But it gets worse. Don’t count those six games against Texas and Anaheim, which you can’t do, but which I’m doing anyway, and Napoli is hitting .177/.284/.292 on the season. That last number is his slugging percentage, not the number of fans willing to pay his way out of town on any given night.

Despite the lack of production, it’s hard to say Napoli’s skills are gone forever, especially while remembering what he did to Anaheim and Texas. But it’s equally difficult to imagine a contending team carrying a first baseman with a .670 OPS who, to date, has been roughly replacement level depending on the WARP-like metric you choose. I don’t know the Red Sox’s plans of course, but as they struggle to get back into the overly forgiving AL East race, one would think the date for Napoli to either snap out of it or lose his job is fast approaching.

As the Red Sox struggle to get back into the overly forgiving AL East race, one would think the date for Napoli to either snap out of it or lose his job is fast approaching.

If he does snap to and OPS .800 the rest of the season, then great. His season numbers will still look bad and it’s tough to imagine the Red Sox re-signing him at this point, but at least they’ll have received something for their money and patience. But if he doesn’t? The Red Sox are rather limited in that eventuality. They could play Brock Holt there, but that seems a waste of the multi-positional talents of \o/. They could move Hanley Ramirez there, but that seems more like an idea than something that could actually happen, like quarks, time travel, or peanut butter with bacon in the same jar. They could move Sandoval to first, but now we’re creating long term problems that don’t really solve short term ones.

The most likely player to replace Napoli as the Red Sox’s starting first baseman this season isn’t on the 40 man roster. That’s Allen Craig. Currently in Triple-A, Craig is getting on base at an over .400 clip, but with just nine extra base hits in 177 plate appearances, the power that marked his time in St. Louis appears to be gone. If Napoli continues to scuffle Craig may get another shot in Boston anyway, but even so, he hasn’t done much to date to push his way back into the Red Sox long-term picture at first base.

The same can be said about Daniel Nava, who began a rehab assignment just last night but faces an uphill climb to reemerge on this roster thanks to Alejandro De Aza.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor, www.sittingstill.smugmug.com

Beyond that, they have Triple-A first baseman Travis Shaw who would likely be stretched as a major league regular given he’s slugging .373 in Pawtucket. And that’s kind of the heart of the problem. There isn’t really anyone else. Shaw is 25 and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for him, at least in terms of becoming a major league regular. Sam Travis just moved up to Double-A Portland and he has some promise, but he’s not going to fix the first base problem for the 2015 Red Sox. There’s a chance Travis could end up as a major league first baseman down the line, but that’s not happening this season or, very likely, next either. The system has some hitters further down, but nobody who is ready to make the jump to the majors and help at first base.

As for trade market, it’s difficult to imagine the Red Sox front office going in deep on this team right now, though things could change in the next couple weeks should they go on an honest-to-goodness winning streak. Conceivably the Brewers could make Adam Lind available. Lind is having another nice season at the plate and has another option year left under his contract. Beyond him the most intriguing free-agent-to-be is probably Chris Davis of the Orioles, and as long as Baltimore is close to first place, that would seem unlikely. Davis will be a free agent after this season, but he’ll likely cost more than Boston will want to spend in dollars and years. Even looking two years into the future, the market only offers Edwin Encarnacion, Pedro Alvarez, Justin Morneau, and *gasp* Mark Teixeira. How crazy would that be?

Perhaps the Red Sox could make a blockbuster move and acquire someone we don’t currently think is available, like a Joey Votto or Paul Goldschmidt. Votto is having a fine season but there’s no way the Red Sox want to be paying him through 2023, and asking about Goldschmidt is just asking to have your ear rung after whomever answers the phone in Arizona slams it down upon first hearing the word “gold.”

As for this season, I like the idea of acquiring Lind, but you have to think so will other teams so the price may be steep. Still, if Napoli hasn’t turned it around and Boston is in it at the deadline, acquiring a first baseman who slugs .500, gets on base, and with one more season under contract at $8 million could go a long way towards fixing first base both this season and next.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images