What is the consensus ranking for each of the Blue Jays' top prospects?
Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.
-Proverbs 11:14
Prospect lists are a tricky animal. Every prospect guru has his or her own biases, favorite prospects, sources, and philosophy, leading to quite a variety in the placement of specific players on his or her list. I like making lists and I like prospects, but I'm no scout and I have no inside connections, so my list wouldn't hold any particular weight. Instead of spending loads of time ranking the players with my own biases, I decided a few years ago to instead assemble a consensus list for each team. You can view all of the previous lists here. Hopefully this will bring safety from a multitude of counselors.
How do I do this? Each time a prospect appears on a list, he gets a number of points (51 minus his ranking). The prospect with the largest amount of points is ranked first.
This year, I made a few changes to the list. First off, I included as many lists as I could possibly find. This includes list from team-specific sites, not just from sites that post a list for every team. Second, I created a separate list for fantasy rankings. Fantasy baseball sites rank their prospects with a different flavor and so there are two rankings: one for real baseball and one for fantasy.
You can also view the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays top prospect list.
Sources
Regular Lists
Minor League Ball (John SIckels)
Fantasy Lists
The List
The "Change" column describes how the prospect’s status changed from 2013. A positive number means the prospect moved up in the list, while a negative number means he moved down.
Here is a spreadsheet that contains all of the 2014 Toronto Blue Jays top prospect rankings in one place. I have removed Keith Law's as his lists require a subscription, though his list is included in the final tally.
| Rank | FRank | Player | Total | FTo | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Aaron Sanchez | 676 | 159 | 0 |
| 2 | 2 | Marcus Stroman | 666 | 157 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | Daniel Norris | 623 | 138 | 3 |
| 4 | 4 | D.J. Davis | 567 | 138 | -1 |
| 5 | 4 | Sean Nolin | 549 | 138 | 2 |
| 5 | 3 | Roberto Osuna | 549 | 147 | -3 |
| 7 | 7 | Franklin Barreto | 539 | 111 | 10 |
| 8 | 8 | Alberto Tirado | 498 | 102 | 2 |
| 9 | 10 | Mitch Nay | 471 | 66 | 10 |
| 10 | 11 | Chase DeJong | 390 | 65 | 6 |
| 11 | 12 | A.J. Jimenez | 373 | 37 | 0 |
| 12 | 14 | Dawel Lugo | 302 | 31 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | Matt Smoral | 256 | 31 | -8 |
| 14 | NA | Tom Robson | 252 | Unranked last year | |
| 15 | NA | Jairo Labourt | 215 | Unranked last year | |
| 16 | NA | John Stilson | 212 | -8 | |
| 17 | 13 | Andy Burns | 185 | 32 | 16 |
| 18 | NA | Dalton Pompey | 180 | 9 | |
| 19 | NA | Kevin Pillar | 149 | 1 | |
| 20 | NA | Clinton Hollon | 129 | 2nd Round | |
| 21 | NA | Adonys Cardona | 124 | -9 | |
| 22 | NA | Dwight Smith Jr. | 115 | 0 | |
| 23 | NA | Matt Dean | 110 | -2 | |
| 24 | 9 | Rowdy Tellez | 98 | 68 | 30th Round |
| 25 | NA | Jake Brentz | 90 | 11th Round | |
| 26 | NA | Miguel Castro | 73 | Unranked last year | |
| 27 | NA | Richard Urena | 71 | Unranked last year | |
| 28 | NA | Santiago Nessy | 53 | -19 | |
| 29 | NA | L.B. Dantzler | 48 | 14th Round | |
| 30 | NA | Anthony Alford | 45 | -17 | |
| 31 | NA | Deck McGuire | 44 | -17 | |
| 32 | NA | Matt Boyd | 39 | 6th Round | |
| 33 | NA | Christian Lopes | 36 | -19 | |
| 34 | NA | Taylor Cole | 22 | Unranked last year | |
| 35 | NA | Shane Dawson | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 36 | NA | Ryan Goins | 18 | -7 | |
| 37 | NA | Jeremy Gabryszwski | 10 | -6 | |
| 38 | NA | Gabriel Cena | 9 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Yeyfry Del Rosario | 6 | -16 | |
| 40 | NA | Dickie Thon | 4 | Unranked last year | |
| 41 | NA | Rob Rasmussen | 3 | Phillies, Brad Lincoln Trade | |
| 42 | NA | Brady Dragmire | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 43 | NA | Emilio Guerrero | 1 | Unranked last year |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Chad Jenkins, #26
Dropped Off:
Tyler Gonzales, #18
Jacob Anderson, #24
Griffin Murphy, #28
Chris Hawkins, #29
Danny Barnes, #31
Javier Avendano, #33
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Blue Jays' top prospects. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum ranking for each prospect.
It appears that clicking the above graphic makes it slightly larger
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Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.
