2014 Cleveland Indians Consensus Top 41 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 (41 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.

Baseball Prospectus did not include Trevor Bauer in their rankings. However, they did rank him behind Cody Anderson on their under-25 ranks. Due to this discrepancy, I inserted him into the list at five and re-ranked the players below him.

You can also view the 2013 Cleveland Indians top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Bullpen Banter

DiaTribe

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Rant

Top Prospect Alert

Fantasy Lists

Dynasty Sports Empire

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 Cleveland Indians 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	2	Francisco Lindor	520	157	0
2	1	Clint Frazier	505	159	1st Round
3	3	Trevor Bauer	485	150	-1
4	5	Tyler Naquin	464	134	0
5	4	Dorssys Paulino	460	145	-2
6	10	Cody Anderson	429	68	Unranked last year
7	5	Ronny Rodriguez	353	134	-1
8	10	Jose Ramirez	340	68	4
9	15	Dace Kime	246	32	3rd Round
10	8	Francisco Mejia	243	72	Dominican IFA
11	12	Tony Wolters	220	63	-2
12	NA	Mitch Brown	209		-7
13	9	Joseph Wendle	149	70	Unranked last year
14	7	Jesus Aguilar	115	101	-3
15	NA	Luigi Rodriguez	104		-8
16	NA	Carlos Moncrief	86		Unranked last year
17	NA	Anthony Santander	79		-2
18	NA	LeVon Washington	78		1
19	14	Sean Brady	69	33	5th Round
20	NA	Austin Adams	60		4
21	NA	C.C. Lee	57		1
22	NA	Kieran Lovegrove	47		-9
23	NA	Kyle Crockett	42		4th Round
24	13	Dylan Baker	40	34	-3
25	NA	Luis Lugo	39		-2
26	NA	Erik Gonzalez	37		Unranked last year
27	NA	Adam Plutko	31		11th Round
28	NA	Enosil Tejada	27		Unranked last year
29	NA	Eric Haase	25		Unranked last year
30	NA	T.J. House	23		Unranked last year
31	NA	Jake Lowery	17		Unranked last year
32	NA	Jordan Smith	15		0
33	NA	Jordan Cooper	14		Unranked last year
34	NA	Shawn Armstrong	13		Unranked last year
35	NA	Nelson Rodriguez	12		Unranked last year
36	NA	Roberto Perez	10		Unranked last year
37	NA	Trey Haley	5		Unranked last year
38	NA	Shawn Morimando	4		Unranked last year
39	NA	Jeff Johnson	3		Unranked last year
40	NA	Bryson Myles	2		Unranked last year
41	NA	Giovanni Soto	1		-13

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Danny Salzar, #8
Cody Allen, #10
Yan Gomes, #34

Rule 5:

Chris McGuiness, #26 - Returned to the Rangers

Claimed on waivers:

Mike McDade, #24 - Claimed by the White Sox

Dropped Off:

Dillon Howard, #14
Scott Barnes, #16
Alex Monsalve, #17
Elvis Araujo, #18
Jorge Martinez, #20
Giovanny Urshela, #26
D'vone McClure, #29
Felix Sterling, #29
Claudio Bautista, #31
Chun Chen, #32

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Indians' 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.