What happened to Jerome Williams?

Jerome Williams was once a prospect. In 2001 and 2002, he was the Giants' top prospect. Does that mean much? Well, in the years before Williams earned the top spot Baseball America named Joe Fontenot (1997), Jason Grilli (1998 and 1999), and Kurt Ainsworth (2000) the Giants' top prospects. Know any of those guys?

It's a very slippery slope from top prospect to has-been, especially for a pitcher. Williams seems to have slid down that slope very quickly. At only 25, he's not much of a pitcher. Via Baseball Prospectus, here are his ERA stats adjusted and converted to a neutral-park major league equivalent performance:

Year	Team	IP	ERA
2004	Giants	129	4.59
2005	Giants	16	6.35
2005	Cubs	106	4.18
2006	Cubs	12	7.62

I've included only Williams' major league stats, but he spent a good part of 2005 and 2006 in the minors. His equivalent ERA in the minors ranged from 4.31 to 9.95.

Is Williams a prospect now? Only in the most generous sense. It made sense for the Nationals to take a chance on him because there probably weren't any better options to fill out their starting rotation, but the chances of Williams improving significantly are low. Instead, we can expect to see a lot more of what we saw last night: 5 innings, 92 pitches, 7 hits, 2 walks, 4 strikeouts, 4 earned runs, and a loss.