For whatever reason, I have always followed baseball’s minor leagues and their prospects. It’s intriguing to me to hear about how good a player is and then to see that sometime down the road they have met or exceeded their expectations, or, like most baseball prospects, they have fallen short of them. Many times, because there are so many minor leaguers and it is so hard to make a baseball team, the top prospects in the sport flame out before they even reach the big leagues.

That is what makes it so tough to process the death of St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras.

He was just 22 when he and his 18-year-old girlfriend were killed on Sunday night in a car accident in his native 
Dominican Republic.

In his six years in the Cardinals organization, he was compared to some of baseball’s greats like Vladimir Guerrero and Albert Pujols while scouts praised his sweet left-handed swing and his power to all fields.

He was on Baseball America’s top 100 minor league prospects list three times, coming in at No. 3 this year. He finally got called up to the major leagues on May 30 of this year. He made his debut the next day against the San Francisco Giants and in his second career at-bat, he launched a home run to right field, giving us a glimpse of what he was praised for.

Like most prospects getting their first experience of major league pitching, he struggled at the plate this year, hitting .239 on the season. However, he did have four hits in seven at-bats in the playoffs, including a big pinch-hit home run in Game 2 of the NLCS.

I’m not a Cardinals fan, but I like to see young players with high expectations succeed, and maybe that is why the death of Taveras has made me feel sick inside. He had the dream of becoming an All-Star and was on the cusp of that dream when his life was taken. He was ready to prove himself to the world as a baseball player and as a human. I’ve never felt more heartbroken for the death of a complete stranger then I have when I found out about Taveras. Who knows what he could have developed into? Maybe a prospect that never reached his potential. Maybe he could have been an All-Star. Maybe he was on the edge 
of greatness.

What hurts the most is we won’t get to see any of it happen.