Projections.

Sometimes you get Dillon Tate with the fourth pick. Sometimes you get Dak Prescott in the fourth round.

Sometimes the number one prospect in baseball, succeeding Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, isn’t Mike Trout or Bryce Harper.

Harper was a consensus number one overall pick, even though that 2010 class also included eventual role 7 types like Manny Machado, Chris Sale, and Jameson Taillon.

Trout went 25th, in a 2009 first round that featured Dustin Ackley going with the second overall pick, players at number three (Donavan Tate) and number five (Matt Hobgood) that never got to the big leagues and are now out of pro ball now, Matt Purke being called by Texas at number 14, and just two current big league regulars from picks two through 16 (Mike Leake and Drew Storen).

Dillon Tate, unrelated to Donavan, went fourth in 2015, the earliest the Rangers had picked since 1986 and the first time since 2010 they’d been higher than 15, and if Tim Bogar hadn’t led Texas to 13 wins in the club’s final 16 games in 2014’s disastrous 95-loss season, the Rangers would have instead picked in the top three, where shortstops Dansby Swanson and Alex Bregman and Brendan Rodgers went off the board.

Instead, the pick was Tate at four (Boston took Andrew Benintendi at seven), he lasted less than 14 months before being flipped with two other right-handed prospects to the Yankees for Carlos Beltran, Beltran was helpful here but the club still got swept in the ALDS, and now Beltran bats a couple slots ahead of Bregman in Houston’s lineup.

While Tate remains in extended spring training for the Yankees, the only one of the three New York pickups in that deal not pitching in minor league games right now (and, in at least one scout’s estimation, not exactly poised for a breakthrough).

Jurickson Profar isn’t Trout and isn’t Harper and, at the moment, isn’t Delino DeShields or Ryan Rua — one a Rule 5 pick whose last club couldn’t find room to roster and option, the other a 17th-round pick out of Painesville, Ohio’s Lake Erie College, a school with an enrollment of 1,200 that had never had a player drafted beforehand.

He remains a big leaguer because he’s a shortstop and because Hanser Alberto is still hurt. With Josh Wilson’s arrival in AAA a week ago (following Will Middlebrooks’s broken hand) and with a couple open spots on the 40-man roster, it wouldn’t surprise me if Profar is optioned soon, switching places with Wilson or Doug Bernier. It’s not as if this club needs its backup shortstop to pinch-hit or play defense late, the way the roster is built, and even if it did Profar hasn’t shown lately that he’s earned opportunities to do either.

A little more than three years before Profar was judged by some to be baseball’s top prospect (ahead, at the time, of Dylan Bundy, Oscar Taveras, Wil Myers, Jose Fernandez, Shelby Miller, Gerrit Cole, Xander Bogaerts, Miguel Sano, Carlos Correa, Christian Yelich, and Francisco Lindor), he signed with Texas for $1.55 million out of Curacao.

Signing for more out of that summer’s J2 class were Sano ($3.15 million/Twins), Gary Sanchez ($3 million/Yankees), Guillermo Pimentel ($2 million/Mariners), and Jose Vinicio ($1.95 million/Red Sox). Just behind Profar were Luis Sardinas ($1.5 million/Rangers) and Juan Urbina ($1.25 million/Mets).

Pimentel and Urbina are out of pro ball. Boston let Vinicio move on this winter, and he’s in AAA with the White Sox, hitting .218. Sardinas is with his fourth organization in four years.

Scouting and player development are hard.

One team would like a do-over on Dillon Tate.

Thirty-one teams would like a do-over on Dak Prescott.

Nearly that many would like to reevaluate where Mike Trout was on their board.

Not including the Angels, who took high school outfielder Randal Grichuk before they took high school outfielder Trout, which is not the same as revisiting cornerback Chidobe Awuzie vs. cornerback Jourdan Lewis a few years down the road since Grichuk and Trout were taken with back-to-back picks.

Trout signed with Los Angeles for slot money ($1.215 million) on July 2, 2009, coincidentally the very day that the Rangers signed Profar, a meaningless note aside from it reminding me that one once assumed the “Baseball’s Best Prospect” mantle from the other, and right now I only wish Jurickson Profar was providing more competitive at-bats to justify a big league roster spot.

You can place dual barometers on a Major League player — his utility to the team’s roster and his value in trade — and while sometimes the state of an organization’s window dictates which of those might take precedence, both are flagging at the moment for Profar, whose standout World Baseball Classic (until the embarrassing pickoff at first) arguably gave hope that there was a corner primed for turning.

But he’s not hitting the ball with any authority, his defensive value is adequate but nothing more (aside from having shortstop in his bag), and the fact that he has an option left makes me wonder if he might not be in Round Rock soon, with Bernier or Wilson claiming one of those two open spots on the 40.

In Round Rock because DeShields and Rua have earned more reps.

And because Profar needs to get at-bats.

And because I wonder, if he shows enough defensively in the middle infield, which team would say no to Profar and C.D. Pelham for Brad Hand, maybe a month or two from now.

It’s easy to look back at Dillon Tate vs. Andrew Benintendi, Shane Larkin vs. the Greek Freak, and Mark Appel vs. Kris Bryant, and there’s no doubt that the Taco Charlton vs. T.J. Watt decision will be revisited forever, for better or worse, but in Profar’s case it was an international signing that looked genius until the player got hurt, and never really recovered his game, at least at this point, and now I’m thinking about Joaquin Arias and would rather not be.