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I had actually found Sweeney myself. What is left out of the above (subtle) use of Sweeney as a supposed example to refute my point is what did he actually do in the majors?
Brian Sweeney: 73 games - 117 innings - 3.38 ERA. 54-K; 24-BB
The sample is too small. But, in the end, Sweeney did in the majors almost exactly what he did in AAA. Wooten never got a shot at the majors, (and his 4.27 ERA in AAA wasn't great ... but wasn't dreadful).
Cloude is the only guy who got 200 MLB innings ... but his overall minors profile has a 3.41 career minors walk rate.
For me ... I would look for CAREER minors walk rates near 2.00. They are extremely rare. But, few of these guys ever get a shot in the majors.
Halama had a 2.2 minors walk rate ... and a 1.9 for AAA. He was a passable #5 start in the majors for 6 years.
What I believe is that MLB (as a whole) believes more or less what you do ... that if you don't have an "out" pitch, you cannot survive in the majors. Therefore, the uber-control guys rarely get a shot ... and if they do, they get yanked at the first bump. At some point, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Pineda comes up and gets shelled in his first outing ... "well, that happens ... he'll learn." If the same thing happens to Carraway ... "see, I told you he was a loser."
And remember, I asked for a comparison. RRS was running double-digit K rates in the minors ... he washed out. Or what about Emiliano Fruto? Francisco Cruceta? Jesse Foppert?
My belief is that there is a balance between the value of the "out" pitch vs. the value of "control". But, when it comes to prospects, I believe the thumb is clearly on the side of the "out" pitch. So, MLB (on the whole) is promoting too many guys with "stuff" who never learn to pitch ... while promoting too few who have the super control. This means that attempting to accurately judge the "can be of value" control guys from the "not ready for prime time" crowd is skewed from the start.
In the end, I think baseball is more than happy to run out 10-K prospects who run 5+ ERAs because they "look good" ... while being generally dismissive of the control specialists who come in and run 4.5 ERAs, because "anybody can hit that slop."
I also think Z is on to this and has some math dudes somewhere that are basically saying, walk rate is about 2.5 times more impactful to bottom line run scoring than K-rate.