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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 (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
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 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.