What is the consensus ranking for each of the Boston Red Sox 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 (61 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.
I removed Brandon Workman and Drake Britton from the few lists that ranked them as they have technically lost their rookie status.
You can also view the 2013 Boston Red Sox top prospect list.
Sources
Regular Lists
Baseball America
Baseball Instinct
Baseball Prospectus
Bleacher Report
Fangraphs
Fire Brand of the American League
Grading on the Curve
Keith Law (ESPN)
Minor League Ball (John Sickels)
MLB.com
MLB Draft Insider
MLB Prospect Portal
Over the Monster
Prospect Digest
Rant
Red Sox Maineiacs
Sox Prospects
Sporting News
Top Prospect Alert
Fantasy Lists
Fake Teams
Prospect 361
Razzball
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 Boston Red Sox 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
Xander Bogaerts
1140
180
0
2
2
Henry Owens
1098
174
4
2
5
Jackie Bradley Jr.
1098
166
0
4
3
Garin Cecchini
1077
172
1
5
7
Matt Barnes
1042
164
-2
6
6
Blake Swihart
1040
165
1
7
8
Allen Webster
1037
160
-3
8
9
Trey Ball
994
158
1st Round
9
4
Mookie Betts
971
167
14
10
10
Anthony Ranaudo
784
106
7
11
NA
Christian Vazquez
553
14
12
NA
Manuel Margot
491
8
13
NA
Deven Marrero
467
-4
14
NA
Bryce Brentz
425
-6
15
NA
Teddy Stankiewicz
362
2nd Round
16
NA
Brian Johnson
324
-4
17
NA
Rafael Devers
222
IFA
18
NA
Ty Buttrey
214
-3
19
NA
Jamie Callahan
210
Unranked last year
20
11
Jon Denney
196
53
3rd Round
21
NA
Wendell Rijo
173
Unranked last year
22
NA
Simon Mercedes
134
Unranked last year
23
NA
Alex Hassan
129
Unranked last year
24
NA
Sean Coyle
124
-3
25
NA
Luis Diaz
116
Unranked last year
26
NA
Cody Kukuk
102
-4
27
NA
Keury De La Cruz
101
-11
28
NA
Tzu-Wei Lin
99
Unranked last year
28
NA
Myles Smith
99
4th Round
30
NA
Daniel McGrath
88
IFA
31
NA
Alex Wilson
75
Unranked last year
32
NA
Dalier Hinojosa
74
Cuban IFA
33
NA
Noe Ramirez
66
Unranked last year
34
NA
Dan Butler
65
Unranked last year
35
NA
Travis Shaw
64
-7
36
NA
Joe Gunkel
62
18th Round
37
NA
Corey Littrell
54
5th Round
37
NA
Steven Wright
54
Unranked last year
39
NA
Dedgar Jimenez
53
Unranked last year
40
NA
Henry Ramos
49
Unranked last year
41
NA
Nick Longhi
46
30th Round
41
NA
David Chester
46
Unranked last year
43
NA
Sergio Gomez
45
-14
44
NA
Keith Couch
44
Unranked last year
45
NA
Pat Light
43
-27
46
NA
Mickey Pena
34
Unranked last year
47
NA
Matthew Price
20
Unranked last year
47
NA
Heiker Meneses
20
Unranked last year
49
NA
Heri Quevedo
19
Unranked last year
50
NA
Kyle Martin
18
9th Round
50
NA
Victor Acosta
18
Unranked last year
52
NA
Kolbrin Vitek
16
-27
53
NA
Jose Vinicio
15
-34
54
NA
Miguel Celestino
14
Unranked last year
55
NA
Kyle Stroup
11
Unranked last year
56
NA
Justin Haley
10
Unranked last year
57
NA
Jonathan Aro
9
Unranked last year
58
NA
Bryan Hudson
8
15th Round
59
NA
Dioscar Romero
7
Unranked last year
60
NA
Jose Almonte
6
Unranked last year
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Brandon Workman, #13
Drake Britton, #14
Traded:
Jose Iglesias, #10 - To the Tigers in the Jake Peavy trade
Brandon Jacobs, #11 - To the White Sox in the Matt Thornton trade
Frank Montas, #23 - To the White Sox in the Jake Peavy trade
Dropped Off:
Brock Holt, #27
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Red Sox 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
. . .
Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.