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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.
You can also view the 2013 Minnesota Twins 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 Minnesota Twins 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 | Byron Buxton | 898 | 200 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | Miguel Sano | 882 | 196 | -1 |
| 3 | 4 | Alex Meyer | 859 | 189 | 1 |
| 4 | 3 | Kohl Stewart | 845 | 191 | 1st Round |
| 5 | 5 | Eddie Rosario | 830 | 182 | 2 |
| 6 | 6 | Jose Berrios | 804 | 179 | 2 |
| 7 | 12 | Jorge Polanco | 720 | 42 | 7 |
| 8 | 8 | Lewis Thorpe | 707 | 129 | Australian IFA |
| 9 | 11 | Trevor May | 611 | 82 | 0 |
| 10 | 7 | Josmil Pinto | 597 | 134 | Venezuelan IFA |
| 11 | 10 | Max Kepler | 539 | 84 | -1 |
| 12 | NA | Stephen Gonsalves | 436 | 4th Round | |
| 13 | 12 | Travis Harrison | 416 | 42 | -2 |
| 14 | NA | Danny Santana | 410 | 2 | |
| 15 | 9 | Adam Brett Walker | 389 | 128 | 4 |
| 16 | 12 | Jorge Felix | 333 | 42 | 8 |
| 17 | NA | Ryan Eades | 250 | 2nd Round | |
| 18 | NA | Kennys Vargas | 212 | Unranked last year | |
| 19 | NA | Fernando Romero | 177 | Unranked last year | |
| 20 | NA | Michael Tonkin | 165 | 1 | |
| 21 | NA | Stuart Turner | 160 | 3rd Round | |
| 22 | NA | Niko Goodrum | 152 | -4 | |
| 23 | NA | Sean Gilmartin | 128 | Twins, Ryan Doumit | |
| 24 | NA | Zack Jones | 126 | 0 | |
| 25 | NA | Miguel Sulbaran | 120 | Drew Butera trade, Dodgers | |
| 26 | NA | Amauris Minier | 111 | Unranked last year | |
| 27 | NA | Mason Melotakis | 96 | -10 | |
| 28 | NA | D.J. Baxendale | 87 | Unranked last year | |
| 29 | NA | Taylor Rodgers | 61 | Unranked last year | |
| 30 | NA | Randy Rosario | 48 | Unranked last year | |
| 30 | NA | D.J. Hicks | 48 | Unranked last year | |
| 30 | NA | Alex Wimmers | 48 | 1 | |
| 33 | NA | Yorman Landa | 45 | Unranked last year | |
| 34 | NA | Luke Bard | 44 | -22 | |
| 34 | NA | Brian Navarreto | 44 | 6th Round | |
| 36 | NA | J.D. Williams | 42 | Unranked last year | |
| 37 | NA | Engelb Vielma | 40 | Unranked last year | |
| 38 | NA | Tyler Duffey | 37 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Madison Boer | 35 | Unranked last year | |
| 40 | NA | Brian Gilbert | 31 | 7th Round | |
| 41 | NA | Alexis Tapia | 30 | Unranked last year | |
| 42 | NA | Matthew Kock | 29 | Unranked last year | |
| 43 | NA | Jose Abreu | 28 | Unranked last year | |
| 44 | NA | Tyler Jones | 27 | Unranked last year | |
| 45 | NA | J.T. Chargois | 26 | -31 | |
| 46 | NA | Adrian Salcedo | 24 | -25 | |
| 47 | NA | Josh Burris | 22 | Unranked last year | |
| 48 | NA | Logan Darnell | 20 | Unranked last year | |
| 49 | NA | Zach Larson | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 49 | NA | Deibinson Romero | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 51 | NA | Brett Lee | 18 | Unranked last year | |
| 51 | NA | Miguel Gonzalez | 18 | Unranked last year | |
| 53 | NA | Logan Wade | 14 | Unranked last year | |
| 54 | NA | Tyler Grimes | 13 | Unranked last year | |
| 55 | NA | Matt Summers | 11 | Unranked last year | |
| 56 | NA | Daniel Ortiz | 9 | Unranked last year | |
| 57 | NA | A.J. Achter | 7 | Unranked last year | |
| 58 | NA | Josue Montanez | 5 | Unranked last year | |
| 59 | NA | Aaron Slegers | 3 | 5th Round | |
| 60 | NA | Levi Michael | 2 | -40 | |
| 61 | NA | Ryan Walker | 1 | 18th Round |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Oswaldo Arcia, #3
Aaron Hicks, #5
Kyle Gibson, #6
Chris Herrmann, #24
Ryan Pressly, #29
Dropped off:
Joe Benson, #13
Romy Jimenez, #23
Hudson Boyd, #24
Corey Williams, #28
Angel Mata, #30
Nate Roberts, #31
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Twins' 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
. . .
Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.