Are David Price and Jay Bruce Emerging Stars or Overhyped Busts?

Hype is a dangerous thing sometimes.  It is like a machine that produces nothing but expectations that are nearly impossible to achieve.  The hype machine victimized many drafters last season that spent draft picks on young players like David Price and Jay Bruce.  Last season these overhyped youngsters did not meet their expectations, but will it just take another year of seasoning before they take off?  This season are they actually under -hyped?

David Price (SP), Tampa Bay Rays
Lofty expectations were placed on this lefty after being selected as the number one overall draft pick in the 2007 amateur draft. 

Price's awaited arrival as a full time starter produced average results.  He went 10-7 with a 4.42 ERA and 1.35 WHIP.  While these numbers aren't terrible, they certainly aren't the dominating type numbers that everyone had expected. 

What's more alarming is Price's BB/9, which was 3.7.  That's a lot of extra base runners that led to a lot of extra runs.  Price did not go a single game last year without allowing a run.  In fact, he had five starts where he walked five or more batters and five starts where he allowed five or more runs. 

On the positive side he went his last seven starts without walking more than two batters.  Control will be the key for Price this season, if he can get his walk rate down we will likely see that ERA and WHIP start to plummet as well.  Until then, I would recommend staying away from Price.

Jay Bruce (OF), Cincinnati Reds
Bruce didn't quite get a full season's worth of at bats after he missed two months in 2009 after experiencing a fractured wrist.  In the time he did play he showed some power potential by hitting 22 HR in only 345 AB.  On the other hand his batting average was a mere .223 and he only hit 15 doubles. 

Bruce will probably never hit for a high average since he strikes out at a high rate and hits a high rate of home runs.  However, one thing to point out from last season was his .221 BABIP which indicates that Bruce had some poor luck when he hit balls in play.  I don't think it is unreasonable to see Bruce's average around the .270 range with 35 HR and around 100 RBI.  Therefore he is worth a shot in the late-middle rounds as a third OF.