2014 Toronto Blue Jays Consensus Top 43 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 Toronto Blue Jays top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Bluebird Banter

Blue Jays from Away

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Jays Journal

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John SIckels)

MLB.com

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Rant

Top Prospect Alert

Vancouver Sun

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 Toronto Blue Jays 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	Aaron Sanchez	676	159	0
2	2	Marcus Stroman	666	157	2
3	4	Daniel Norris	623	138	3
4	4	D.J. Davis	567	138	-1
5	4	Sean Nolin	549	138	2
5	3	Roberto Osuna	549	147	-3
7	7	Franklin Barreto	539	111	10
8	8	Alberto Tirado	498	102	2
9	10	Mitch Nay	471	66	10
10	11	Chase DeJong	390	65	6
11	12	A.J. Jimenez	373	37	0
12	14	Dawel Lugo	302	31	12
13	14	Matt Smoral	256	31	-8
14	NA	Tom Robson	252		Unranked last year
15	NA	Jairo Labourt	215		Unranked last year
16	NA	John Stilson	212		-8
17	13	Andy Burns	185	32	16
18	NA	Dalton Pompey	180		9
19	NA	Kevin Pillar	149		1
20	NA	Clinton Hollon	129		2nd Round
21	NA	Adonys Cardona	124		-9
22	NA	Dwight Smith Jr.	115		0
23	NA	Matt Dean	110		-2
24	9	Rowdy Tellez	98	68	30th Round
25	NA	Jake Brentz	90		11th Round
26	NA	Miguel Castro	73		Unranked last year
27	NA	Richard Urena	71		Unranked last year
28	NA	Santiago Nessy	53		-19
29	NA	L.B. Dantzler	48		14th Round
30	NA	Anthony Alford	45		-17
31	NA	Deck McGuire	44		-17
32	NA	Matt Boyd	39		6th Round
33	NA	Christian Lopes	36		-19
34	NA	Taylor Cole	22		Unranked last year
35	NA	Shane Dawson	19		Unranked last year
36	NA	Ryan Goins	18		-7
37	NA	Jeremy Gabryszwski	10		-6
38	NA	Gabriel Cena	9		Unranked last year
39	NA	Yeyfry Del Rosario	6		-16
40	NA	Dickie Thon	4		Unranked last year
41	NA	Rob Rasmussen	3		Phillies, Brad Lincoln Trade
42	NA	Brady Dragmire	2		Unranked last year
43	NA	Emilio Guerrero	1		Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Chad Jenkins, #26

Dropped Off:

Tyler Gonzales, #18
Jacob Anderson, #24
Griffin Murphy, #28
Chris Hawkins, #29
Danny Barnes, #31
Javier Avendano, #33

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Blue Jays' 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.