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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.
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
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 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.
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.