Jim Lindeman averaged 2.3 home runs per season in his nine-year career. Jeff Hixon/Getty Images

This is the season when hope springs eternal in baseball, especially for hot prospects. But just because a can't-miss kid looks terrific in the Grapefruit or Cactus League, doesn't mean he'll turn into a star. Here are some springtime phenoms who never panned out.

1. Clint Hurdle: The Rockies manager was the toast of baseball in 1978, earning a Sports Illustrated cover story with the tagline "This Year's Phenom." Hurdle could seemingly do everything -- hit for average and power, and play multiple positions. As it turned out, Hurdle's flaw was that he couldn't do any one thing especially well in the majors. In parts of 10 seasons with four different teams he hit .259 with 32 career homers while solidifying the mystique of the SI cover jinx.

2. Chris Pittaro: Then Tigers manager Sparky Anderson couldn't say enough about Pittaro in 1985, calling the youngster the best rookie he'd ever seen. Pittaro hit .314 and struck out just six times in 70 spring-training at-bats. He was so impressive that the Tigers soon shipped Howard Johnson to the Mets and handed Pittaro the starting third-baseman job. Pittaro went 3 for 4 on Opening Day, then went downhill from there. He hit .242 with no homers as a rookie and played just 53 games in the majors.

3. Jim Lindeman: In 1987 Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog gushed, "I would be very surprised if by the end of the year [Lindeman] wasn't a very good candidate for Rookie of the Year." The Cards traded Andy Van Slyke on April 1 to make room for Lindeman in right field, but the rookie soon injured his back. He hit just .208 with eight homers and only 21 total home runs over a career that spanned nine seasons with five teams. Van Slyke, meanwhile, became a key member of pennant-winning teams in Pittsburgh.

4. Steve Dalkowski: Some baseball insiders say the Orioles farmhand from the late 1950s and early '60s was the hardest thrower ever, but he was also one of the wildest. In 995 career minor league innings, Dalkowski struck out 1,396 while walking 1,354. In 1962, though, Dalkowski threw 37 straight scoreless innings at Double-A Elmira under manager Earl Weaver. Dalkowski was lights-out in spring training the following year, hurling six scoreless and hitless innings over several relief appearances. Manager Billy Hitchcock told Dalkowski he had made the big club the morning of March 22, 1963, but the pitcher hurt his elbow later that day against the Yankees. He never threw in the majors.

5. Clint Hartung: In 1947, Hartung was the rookie everybody was talking about. A Life magazine story about the GI baseball star made Hartung a national figure. Nobody was certain whether Hartung would end up being a hurler or batter, but it seemed beyond question that he would be a star. "Rather than stop at the Polo Grounds," Red Smith once wrote, "they should have taken him straight to Cooperstown." A funny thing happened to Hartung on the way to the Hall of Fame: he wasn't that good. He went 29-29 as a pitcher and hit .238 for his career, and is best known as the answer to the following trivia question: Who was on third base when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round The World?

6. Roger Freed: In December 1970 the Phillies traded three major leaguers for Freed, the reigning minor league player of the year. At 6-foot and a solid 190 pounds, Freed was billed as a slugger. Everything seemed in place when the outfielder-first baseman led Philly with five homers and 14 RBIs in spring training in '71, then tantalized the crowd at the opening of Veterans Stadium with several massive batting-practice home runs. But Freed was a classic 4A player, one who kills minor league pitching but can't quite hack it in the bigs. He hit just .221 with six homers as a rookie and was back in the minors the next year.

7. Dave Nicholson: The Orioles signed Nicholson to a then shocking $115,000 bonus in 1958, which was considered so outlandish that the team soon stripped manager Paul Richards of his GM duties. A sturdy 6-2 and 215 pounds, Nicholson specialized in hitting moonshots, especially during spring training. Longtime sportswriter Jerome Holtzman has said the blast Nicholson hit in Miami off Moe Drabowsky that cleared the leftfield light tower was among the longest he has ever seen. Unfortunately, Nicholson was far more likely to strike out. As a 20-year-old rookie in 1960, he hit just .186 with five homers and 55 strikeouts in 113 at-bats. His best season came for the White Sox in 1963, when he hit 22 homers but struck out 175 times, then a record.

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8. Dick Wakefield: He was the sport's first real bonus baby. In 1941, the Tigers won a frenzied bidding war for the 6-4, 210-pound outfielder at the University of Michigan with an offer of $52,000 and a new Cadillac. That seemed a bargain when Wakefield reached the bigs fulltime in 1943, batting .316 and leading the league with 200 hits and 38 doubles. Wakefield hit .355 in a half season the next year before joining the Navy, where he bet a young Ted Williams that he would have a better career. Wakefield lost big as he failed to recapture his pre-war brilliance, never again hitting better than .283 or collecting more than 12 doubles.

9. David Clyde: This entry is a bit of a cheat, since Clyde zoomed to prominence in 1973 without stopping in the minor leagues, never mind attending spring training. The Rangers made Clyde their top draft pick that year after he had thrown five no-hitters as a senior at Houston's Westchester High. Needing a box-office draw, the Rangers plugged the 18-year-old into their starting rotation. In front of the first sellout in franchise history, Clyde won his initial start while allowing just one hit in five innings. But he won only 17 more career games and was soon plagued by arm troubles.

10. Joe Charboneau: The Indians rookie burst onto the scene in 1980. After a hot spring, Super Joe received a two-minute standing ovation in Cleveland's home opener from a city starving for baseball heroes. Charboneau went 3 for 3 with his second homer of the young season. The media loved him because of his tales of picking up pocket money by fighting bare-knuckled in boxcars and drinking beer through his nose with a straw after opening the bottle with his eye socket. Charboneau was named Rookie of the Year after hitting .289 with 23 homers despite missing most of the last six weeks with a pelvis injury. But he injured his back on a headfirst slide during spring training in 1981 and was out of baseball by 1985.