Next Thursday, the baseball world will brim with excitement about the seemingly limitless future of players introduced to their new organizations through the draft. And then those players, heralded as future everyday players and stars, will disappear into relative obscurity, usually for four, five, or six years, before they give a sense of how closely their projected futures align with their real skills.

It’s hard to overemphasize the disparity between the amateur and big league games. In some ways, the players who will be introduced as draftees next week have no idea what they’re in for.

“It’s crazy,’’ said Red Sox righthander Matt Barnes, a first-round pick in 2011 who five years later seems to have arrived. “The difference between playing college baseball, even at the highest level, and here, it’s completely different.

“Obviously the players are better, mistakes get hit, guys hit good pitches. In college, you can get away with a lot, and the strike zone is twice the size.

“I don’t think I had any idea how much went into game-planning, scouting, knowing hitters’ tendencies, things like that. It didn’t really hit me until I got here. I was like, ‘This is a lot of information.’ You have everything on every guy, what he’s done in his career. It really sunk in when I got here.’’

If anyone should have understood the distance between amateur baseball and the big leagues, it was Travis Shaw. After all, Shaw — taken in the ninth round of the 2011 draft — had grown up in big league clubhouses, the son of two-time All-Star closer Jeff Shaw. Yet even with his background, he had a hard time believing what his father was telling him.

“He just kept saying, ‘At-bats, at-bats, at-bats. You’ll be surprised by how much you’ll learn just by getting at-bats,’ ’’ said Shaw. “It didn’t make sense to me. ‘What do you mean? You have it or you don’t.’

“I get it now. Experience is the biggest development curve. For me, it was going through failure. That was a huge development curve for me. It was a blessing.’’

Shaw initially looked like he had a chance to fast-track with a very strong 2012 campaign in his first full pro season. But he stalled in 2013 in Double A, and had to stay there to start 2014. He got to the big leagues roughly four years after he was drafted out of college.

“You think about development path, if you go by a blueprint of it, technically I was right on time,’’ said Shaw, noting that a full year at each of four full-season levels would represent a normal path.

That gap between the draft and the big leagues underscores how difficult it is to project what a player will become at any moment in time. Barnes exploded onto the scene in Single A at the start of 2012 and seemed a candidate for the fast track as a starter. His career progressed in very different fashion. Blake Swihart is still trying to give definition to his career nearly five years after he was taken in the first round by the Sox. Another 2011 first-rounder, Henry Owens, has seen his stock go on a roller coaster over recent years.

By the same token, players who aren’t regarded as elite prospects at a given moment — Shaw or 2008 ninth-rounderChristian Vazquez — can assert themselves in a fashion that defies expectations. A prospect who looks like a failure at one moment, someone like Vazquez or 2013 first-rounder Trey Ball, has so much development in front of them that suggestions of non-prospect status can prove drastically premature.

“Trey would be in his college draft year,’’ noted Red Sox pitching coordinator Ralph Treuel of a 21-year-old lefthander whose development of a slider this year has helped him forge a 2.31 ERA through seven starts in High A Salem.

Next week’s draft will offer a day for organizations and players to daydream about the future. But once that landmark event passes, the reality of player development will dawn, with many years to determine just who and what an organization has added.

Almonte impressing

Jose Almonte has made his mark in Single A Greenville. Last week, the 20-year-old righthander threw six no-hit innings for the Drive, and he backed that up Thursday with five innings of one-run ball. He was slowed out of spring training by a hip injury, but in four starts, he has a 2.14 ERA with 18 strikeouts and 6 walks in 21 innings.

Almonte’s low- to mid-90s fastball (up to 95 in his most recent start), advanced feel for a true curveball, and developing changeup have made him a headache for hitters. With the Lowell Spinners in 2015, he limited opponents to a .171 average, the lowest mark in the New York-Penn League. This year, Single A foes are hitting .197 against him.

Those numbers may reflect in part on some of the deception in Almonte’s delivery. He stays closed before turning late in an effort to stay on line through the strike zone. He incorporated that on his own, and the Red Sox signed off.

“We’ve got a lot of different deliveries,’’ said Treuel. “We don’t subscribe to the cookie-cutter approach when it comes to deliveries, but there are certain absolutes. You’ve got to get over the rubber, on time, be pretty compact, and not drift.’’

Is lefty righted?

The Sox have been working with Owens to stay over the rubber in hopes that a more compact delivery will permit him to throw more strikes. In his most recent outing for Pawtucket, he struggled through three innings — walking three and hitting a batter — before locking in his delivery in the fourth. He retired the last 10 batters he faced.

Owens has had extreme early-season control difficulties before going on weeks-long runs of attacking the strike zone throughout his minor league career, including 2015 with the PawSox. The Sox are hopeful that his most recent start is a harbinger of a turnaround.

“He’s a big, tall guy,’’ said Treuel. “It takes him time to get into his rhythm. He always seems to right the ship. It looked like the last three innings were a positive indication that he was starting to feel that again.’’

Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com.