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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.
Also, not all sites ranked Miguel Gonzalez as a prospect. His average ranking was four of the sites that did rank him. So in the consensus list, I gave him a ranking of four in each of the lists that did not rank him, but left the other rankings the same.
You can also view the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies top prospect list.
Sources
Regular Lists
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 Philadelphia Phillies 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 | Maikel Franco | 847 | 300 | 6 |
| 2 | 2 | Jesse Biddle | 828 | 291 | -1 |
| 3 | 3 | J.P. Crawford | 819 | 286 | 1st Round |
| 4 | 4 | Miguel Gonzalez | 795 | 285 | Cuban IFA |
| 5 | 5 | Roman Quinn | 627 | 275 | -1 |
| 6 | 6 | Carlos Tocci | 606 | 216 | 7 |
| 7 | 8 | Aaron Altherr | 588 | 177 | Unranked last year |
| 8 | 7 | Severino Gonzalez | 568 | 213 | Unranked last year |
| 9 | 9 | Ethan Martin | 561 | 175 | -3 |
| 10 | NA | Andrew Knapp | 487 | 2nd Round | |
| 11 | 17 | Kelly Dugan | 466 | 39 | 16 |
| 12 | 15 | Dylan Cozens | 437 | 42 | Unranked last year |
| 13 | 11 | Adam Morgan | 434 | 126 | -10 |
| 14 | NA | Cord Sandberg | 425 | 3rd Round | |
| 15 | 13 | Zach Green | 382 | 120 | Unranked last year |
| 16 | 11 | Cesar Hernandez | 374 | 126 | 3 |
| 16 | 10 | Tommy Joseph | 374 | 164 | -14 |
| 18 | NA | Shane Watson | 361 | -9 | |
| 19 | NA | Kenny Giles | 267 | -3 | |
| 20 | 14 | Deivi Grullon | 264 | 44 | Unranked last year |
| 21 | NA | Yoel Mecias | 202 | Unranked last year | |
| 22 | NA | Jan Hernandez | 170 | 3rd Round | |
| 23 | NA | Jake Sweaney | 157 | 4th Round | |
| 24 | NA | Cameron Perkins | 145 | ||
| 25 | 16 | Mitch Gueller | 131 | 41 | -8 |
| 26 | NA | Luis Encarnacion | 130 | Dominican IFA | |
| 27 | NA | Cameron Rupp | 124 | Unranked last year | |
| 28 | NA | Jose Pujols | 123 | -4 | |
| 29 | NA | Andrew Pullin | 93 | 0 | |
| 30 | NA | Zach Collier | 79 | Unranked last year | |
| 31 | NA | Kevin Munson | 62 | Rule 5 | |
| 32 | NA | Larry Greene Jr. | 56 | -20 | |
| 33 | NA | Tyson Gillies | 52 | -6 | |
| 34 | NA | Drew Anderson | 43 | Unranked last year | |
| 35 | NA | Austin Wright | 42 | -20 | |
| 35 | NA | Phillippe Aumont | 42 | -21 | |
| 37 | NA | Jiwan James | 32 | -8 | |
| 38 | NA | Dave Buchanan | 31 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Hoby Milner | 27 | -7 | |
| 39 | NA | Samuel Hiciano | 27 | Unranked last year | |
| 41 | NA | Sebastian Valle | 24 | -30 | |
| 42 | NA | Malquin Canelo | 23 | Unranked last year | |
| 43 | NA | Mitch Walding | 22 | -11 | |
| 44 | NA | Trey Williams | 21 | 7th Round | |
| 45 | NA | Leandro Castro | 20 | Unranked last year | |
| 46 | NA | Justin Friend | 18 | Unranked last year | |
| 47 | NA | Lewis Alezones | 16 | Unranked last year | |
| 48 | NA | Kyle Simon | 14 | -19 | |
| 49 | NA | Gabriel Lino | 12 | -31 | |
| 50 | NA | Herlis Rodriguez | 9 | Unranked last year | |
| 51 | NA | Anthony Hewitt | 8 | Unranked last year | |
| 52 | NA | Jiandido Tromp | 7 | Unranked last year | |
| 53 | NA | Tyler Viza | 6 | 32nd Round | |
| 54 | NA | Yacksel Rios | 4 | Unranked last year | |
| 55 | NA | Mauricio Robles | 3 | Unranked last year | |
| 56 | NA | Willie Carmona | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 57 | NA | Mark Leiter Jr. | 1 | 22nd Round |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Jonathan Pettibone, #5
Cody Asche, #8
Darin Ruf, #9
Justin De Fratus, #22
Dropped off:
Julio Rodriguez, #20
Brody Colvin, #21
Lisalverto Bonilla, #22
Kevin Brady, #25
Perci Garner, #25
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Phillies' prospect rankings. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum rankings 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.