Hit or Error? Baseball Digest's 1991 Rookie Edition Reexamined

In our twenty-ninth installment of Hit or Error, we crack open the March 1991 issue of Baseball Digest—where hope springs eternal, unless you were following the Mets’ farm system at the time. If the 1990 scouting report was a trickle, 1991 is a full-blown drought. Just three Mets prospects made the cut, and one of them—Darren Reed—is a returning guest star from last year’s issue. It’s like going to a concert and realizing the band is just playing the same setlist, only slower.

With the farm system continuing its nosedive into irrelevance, this week’s edition will be short and, depending on your tolerance for pitching heartbreak, maybe not so sweet. We’re taking a look at righthanders Julio Valera and Anthony Young—two arms that offered promise, peril, and, in one case, a historic losing streak. So let’s once again ask the eternal question: did Baseball Digest’s scouts deliver a hit, or commit an error?

Julio Valera: The Dominican Ron Darling That Wasn’t

If you read Julio Valera’s scouting report in 1990, you might’ve thought the Mets had found the Dominican Ron Darling. The Baseball Digest write-up read like it was written by someone with a thesaurus full of pitching buzzwords and a six-pack of optimism: solid fastball with good sinking action, sharp slider, and good straight change; aggressive, comes right at hitters. It painted a picture of a young right-hander who didn’t just pitch—he attacked. And in the minors, Valera mostly lived up to that billing. He was a workhorse with three decent pitches and the bulldog mentality of a guy who thought pitch counts were for cowards.

He climbed the Mets ladder with impressive stops in Columbia, Jackson, and Tidewater, putting up sub-3.00 ERAs and piling up innings like he was getting paid by the out. In 1989 alone, he made 27 starts across three levels and somehow managed to complete nine of them. Kids, ask your grandparents what a “complete game” is. At one point, he threw 191 innings in A-ball, struck out 144, and walked just 51—numbers that suggested the Mets had found something special.

But once he reached Queens in 1990, the sink on his fastball seemed to flatten, the slider lost some bite, and hitters stopped flailing and started feasting. He made just five appearances with the Mets over two seasons, posting an ERA north of the FDR Drive. After a trade to the Angels, he got a longer leash and even started 28 games for California in 1992, going 8-11 with a respectable 3.73 ERA—about as “serviceable” as serviceable gets.

In all, Valera spent 11 seasons in the minors, 5 in the majors, and bounced around everywhere from Taiwan to Atlantic City, chasing the promise that once made him a top prospect. He finished with more than 1,100 innings in the minors and over 200 in leagues you’ve probably only seen on baseball-reference after a rabbit hole click-fest.

Was he an error? Maybe at the big-league level. But the guy pitched in parts of two decades, carved out a journeyman career with plenty of high points, and never backed down from a challenge.

Losing Streak, Winning Soul: The Anthony Young Story

Scouting Report, circa 1990: Above-average fastball with good life, sharp slider, good curveball. Very aggressive. A fierce competitor.

Translation: “Bring your lunch pail — and maybe a rabbit’s foot.”

When the Mets brass sized up Anthony Young in the minors, they saw a hard-throwing righty with a bulldog mentality, a lively heater, and a competitive fire that could roast marshmallows. AY looked like he could eat innings for breakfast and still be hungry for a ninth-inning save. If baseball games were won on effort, kindness, and sheer decency, he’d be in Cooperstown with a plaque the size of the Shea bullpen bench.

But then came the streak. 27 straight losses. From May ’92 to July ’93, Anthony Young could’ve pitched with Bob Gibson’s fastball and Sandy Koufax’s curve, and he still might’ve lost 2-1 because the Mets were trotting out the “Worst Team Money Could Buy” behind him — a team so snakebit it made Snakes on a Plane look like a rom-com.

And yet, through it all, AY never flinched. Never snapped. Never pointed fingers or ducked the media. He stood in front of his locker with the grace of a Cy Young winner and the smile of a man who knew that baseball, for all its cruelty, still beat working in a cubicle. He even joked that when he finally got the W, “it wasn’t a monkey off my back — it was a zoo.” Jay Leno poked fun at him nightly, but when Young finally got on The Tonight Show, he gave it right back. No bitterness. No complaints. Just a quiet dignity and a fastball with sink.

Here’s the thing: Anthony Young didn’t pitch badly. Not during the streak. Not even close. He saved 15 games in ’92, posted a respectable 3.77 ERA across his first two seasons, and went months without giving up a run. One night, he retired 23 Padres in a row before Archi Cianfrocco (yes, that Archi Cianfrocco) hit a two-run bomb that turned another gem into another L.

He became the face of futility, but the numbers didn’t match the label. Bob Feller sent him a letter of support. A woman mailed him a $2 bill for luck. Psychics called the Mets office. AY’s locker probably smelled like sage and horsehair by July.

Off the field, he was better than any stat line could capture. At fantasy camp, he was the ultimate teammate — funny, wise, patient, and endlessly encouraging. He’d throw BP until his arm turned into linguine and still have energy to talk pitching with a guy who peaked in JV ball in 1983.

His teammates loved him. His campers adored him. And I’ll tell you this — I knew him. And I miss him.

He passed in 2017, far too soon, at 51. But if you were lucky enough to know him, you remember the man before the numbers. The one who loved the game, loved kids, and never stopped smiling — not even after 27 straight losses.

Scouting report got it right: Very aggressive. Fierce competitor. They just forgot a few things:

Heart of a lion. Shoulder of steel. And the soul of a teacher.

Error? Never.

Hit. Forever.

So as we close the book on the 1991 scouting report—light on prospects, heavy on perspective—we’re reminded that baseball, like life, doesn’t always reward effort with success or talent with trophies. Julio Valera had the arsenal but not the longevity. Anthony Young had the stuff, the spirit, and the streak that made him famous for all the wrong reasons—and beloved for all the right ones. In a game obsessed with numbers, sometimes the most lasting legacy is character. And if that’s the metric, then Anthony Young was a Hall of Famer from the moment he toed the rubber.