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2014 Washington Nationals Consensus Top 39 Prospects

What is the consensus ranking for each of the Nationals' top prospects?

Lucas Giolito is the Nationals top prospect
Lucas Giolito is the Nationals top prospect
Joy R. Absalon-US PRESSWIRE

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.

The trade that brought Drew Vettleson and Felipe Rivero over from the Rays happened after many of the lists were published. Of the lists that did rank them, the averages were 11 and 13, respectively. Due to this, I added these rankings for them for lists that went over 10, but left them unranked for lists that only went to 10.

You can also view the 2013 Washington Nationals top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Bullpen Banter

District Sports Page

Fangraphs

Federal Baseball

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

MLB.com

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Nats GM

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 Washington Nationals 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 Lucas Giolito 479 120 2
2 2 A.J. Cole 461 115 2
3 3 Brian Goodwin 451 111 -1
4 4 Michael Taylor 391 105 6
5 6 Sammy Solis 373 76 3
6 8 Jake Johansen 348 70 2nd Round
7 4 Matt Skole 334 105 -2
8 7 Steven Souza 293 73 17
9 10 Matt Purke 200 46 0
10 9 Drew Ward 199 49 3rd Round
11 NA Pedro Severino 177 Unranked last year
12 11 Zach Walters 172 43 1
13 NA Drew Vettleson 159 Rays, Jose Lobaton
14 NA Felipe Rivero 145 Rays, Jose Lobaton
15 NA Eury Perez 135 -8
16 NA Jefry Rodriguez 133 Unranked last year
17 12 Austin Voth 123 22 5th Round
18 NA Tony Renda 114 -4
19 NA Jeff Kobernus 78 Unranked last year
20 NA Brett Mooneyham 54 -1
20 NA Aaron Barrett 54 Unranked last year
22 NA Christian Garcia 53 -11
23 NA Blake Treinen 38 7
24 NA Rafael Bautista 33 Unranked last year
25 NA Nick Pivetta 32 4th Round
26 NA Richie Mirowski 18 Unranked last year
27 NA Dakota Bacus 17 Athletics, Kurt Suzuki
28 NA Erik Davis 16 Unranked last year
28 NA Robert Benincasa 16 Unranked last year
30 NA Sandy Leon 12 -15
31 NA Cody Gunter 10 Unranked last year
32 NA Nell Holland 9 Unranked last year
32 NA Brandon Miller 9 -11
34 NA Pedro Encarnacion 8 Unranked last year
35 NA Blake Schwartz 7 Unranked last year
35 NA Jason Martinson 7 -14
37 NA Estarlin Martinez 5 -10
38 NA Anderson Franco 3 Dominican IFA
39 NA Randy Encarnacion 2 Unranked last year
39 NA Paul Demny 2 -15

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Anthony Jordan, #1
Taylor Jordan, #27

Traded:

Nate Karns, #6 - To the Rays in the Jose Lobaton trade
Robbie Ray, #17 - To the Tigers in the Doug Fister trade

Unsigned:

Carlos Rivero, #20 - Signed by the Red Sox

Dropped Off:

Destin Hood, #12
Chris Marrero, #16
Daniel Rosenbaum, #17
Stephen Perez, #23
Cutter Dykstra, #26
Kylin Turnbull, #27
Rick Hague, #30
Adrian Sanchez, #32

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Nationals' top prospects. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum ranking for each prospect.

Nationals2014prospects

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.