Callaspo is not a bust. He's a good hitter. He just can't field, and he's an alcoholic.
By the way, I find it comical you list 6 players for your argument. Wow, a whole 6 players?? Gee, well that must prove that prospects never pan out!
I went to Scout.com and picked a random year (2006). Let's take a look at their Top 50 prospects.
Francisco Liriano, Delmon Young, Chad Billingsley, Justin Verlander, Ryan Zimmerman, Prince Fielder, Matt Cain, Carlos Quentin, Russell Martin, Troy Tulowitzky..........all in the Top 25!! 10 of the Top 25 from 2006 are stars in the league. There's also a couple of other quality players mixed in there.
Now, onto the 26-50 prospects....
Billy Butler, Jon Lester, Nick Markakis, Phillip Hughes, Adam Jones, Jon Pappelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Kubel......so, some pretty solid players and a couple of stars.
So, of the Top 50 from 2006, we have 18 (36%) that are either stars or very good players. That means that slightly more than 1 in 3 turned out to be very good-great. Now, there's probably 5-6 other players that could still end up with very nice careers (ie Alex Gordon).
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/pr ... 26983.html
While you did list some busts the Angels had, have you seen the other top prospects from 2004???
Let's see here, the Top 10 had Joe Mauer, Delmon Young, Grady Sizemore (he was good), Edwin Jackson, Prince Fielder, and BJ Upton.
11-20 had Zack Greinke, Justin Morneau, Cole Hamels, JJ Hardy, and Scott Kazmir (he was good for a few years)
21-30 had David Wright, Angel Guzman, Ervin Santana, and Felix Hernandez
31-40 had Franklin Guitierrez, Bobby Crosby, and Hanley Ramirez
41-50 had Dioner Navarro, James Loney, Joe Blanton, Adam Wainwright
That's 22 players (44%) that are either stars or quality big leaguers.
How's about 2001?
Top 10 had Josh Hamilton, Josh Beckett, Ben Sheets, Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia
11-20 had Carlos Pena, Vernon Wells, Roy Oswalt
21-30 had Austin Kearns, Alfonso Soriano
31-40 had Jimmy Rollins, Felipe Lopez, Adam Dunn, Joe Crede, Jack Cust, Jake Peavy
41-50 had Albert Pujols, Aubrey Huff, Brett Myers
That's 19 players (38%) that are either stars or quality big leaguers.
There's only a few years dating back to the 1980's where the Top 50 prospects of Baseball America didn't produce at least 30% of players that ended up being at least solid big leaguers.
The point is if you have a ton of players that are highly ranked prospects, your odds of winning at the big league level once they're all up is very HIGH. Is it a guarantee the Royals will be a winner soon? Absolutely not. Is it likely? Most definitely. History proves that.