2014 Los Angeles Angels Consensus Top 59 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 (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 Los Angeles Angels top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Angels Win

Baseball America

Baseball Instinct

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Inside the Halos

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John SIckels)

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Monkey With A Halo

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 Los Angeles Angels 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	Taylor Lindsey	785	199	3
2	2	Kaleb Cowart	778	194	-1
3	3	C.J. Cron	756	193	0
4	7	R.J. Alvarez	712	130	2
5	4	Mark Sappington	688	190	4
5	8	Hunter Green	688	91	2nd Round
7	6	Alex Yarbrough	653	131	4
8	5	Jose Rondon	526	136	9
9	10	Mike Morin	469	86	Unranked last year
10	13	Nick Maronde	459	45	-8
11	9	Zach Borenstein	450	89	Unranked last year
12	11	Eric Stamets	354	85	6
13	14	Ricardo Sanchez	343	44	Venezuelan IFA
14	12	Natanael Delgado	300	83	Dominican IFA
15	NA	Cam Bedrosian	272		-1
16	NA	Reid Scoggins	256		4
17	NA	Austin Wood	251		-10
18	NA	Keynan Middleton	172		3rd Round
19	NA	Cal Towey	143		17th Round
20	NA	Mike Clevinger	141		-12
21	NA	Kyle McGowin	130		5th Round
22	NA	Matt Shoemaker	124		Unranked last year
23	NA	Elliot Morris	85		4th Round
24	NA	Matt Long	79		Unranked last year
25	NA	Michael Snyder	78		Unranked last year
26	NA	Yency Almonte	77		-1
27	NA	Alfonso Alcantara	72		-3
28	NA	Ryan Chafee	69		Unranked last year
29	NA	Jeremy Berg	66		Unranked last year
30	NA	Tyler DeLoach	60		Unranked last year
31	NA	Michael Fish	54		32nd Round
32	NA	Sherman Johnson	47		-5
33	NA	Kramer Sneed	45		Yankees, Vernon Wells trade
34	NA	Zach Wright	43		Unranked last year
35	NA	Jonah Wesely	42		11th Round
36	NA	Eduard Santos	39		Unranked last year
37	NA	Mario Martinez	33		Unranked last year
37	NA	Alex Keudell	33		Signed off waivers
37	NA	Kevin Johnson	33		Unranked last year
40	NA	Victor Alcantara	31		Unranked last year
40	NA	Arjenis Fernandez	31		Unranked last year
42	NA	Joey Krehbiel	30		Unranked last year
42	NA	Mike Piazza	30		Unranked last year
44	NA	Eduar Lopez	29		Unranked last year
45	NA	Brian Moran	28		Blue Jays, International Draft cap space
46	NA	Ismael Dionicio	27		Dominican IFA
47	NA	Abel Baker	26		Unranked last year
48	NA	Cory Rasmus	24		Braves, Scott Downs
48	NA	Jett Bandy	24		Unranked last year
50	NA	Wade Hinkle	19		-21
51	NA	Daniel Tillman	17		-35
51	NA	Nate Smith	17		8th Round
53	NA	Eswarlin Jimenez	16		-33
54	NA	Eric Cendejas	15		Unranked last year
55	NA	Andrew Heid	14		Unranked last year
56	NA	Jonathan Van Eaton	12		Undrafted free agent
57	NA	Stephen McGee	9		9th Round
58	NA	Miguel Hermosillo	7		28th Round
59	NA	Lianmy Galan	6		Dominican IFA

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Kole Calhoun, #9
Luis Jimenez, #12
Andrew Romine, #19
Michael Roth, #27

Traded:

Randal Grichuk, #5 - To the Cardinals in the David Freese trade
A.J. Schugel, #15 - To the Diamondbacks in the Mark Trumbo trade

Released:

Nick Mutz, #20

Claimed on waivers:

Travis Witherspoon, #12 - Claimed by the Mariners

Dropped Off:

Wendell Soto, #20
Jonathan Walsh, #26
Chevy Clarke, #30

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Angels' 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

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Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.