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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 (21 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 Pittsburgh Pirates 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 Pittsburgh Pirates 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 | Gregory Polanco | 274 | 79 | 3 |
| 2 | 2 | Jameson Taillon | 269 | 77 | 0 |
| 3 | 3 | Tyler Glasnow | 250 | 71 | 8 |
| 4 | 5 | Austin Meadows | 237 | 64 | 1st Round |
| 5 | 4 | Alen Hanson | 214 | 68 | -2 |
| 6 | 7 | Nick Kingham | 208 | 54 | 2 |
| 7 | 6 | Josh Bell | 203 | 59 | -1 |
| 8 | 8 | Reese McGuire | 189 | 53 | 1st Round |
| 9 | 10 | Luis Heredia | 160 | 25 | -4 |
| 10 | 9 | Harold Ramirez | 114 | 36 | Unranked last year |
| 11 | 11 | Barrett Barnes | 60 | 23 | -4 |
| 12 | NA | Tony Sanchez | 50 | 9 | |
| 13 | NA | Clay Holmes | 46 | -3 | |
| 13 | NA | Wyatt Mathisen | 46 | -4 | |
| 15 | NA | JaCoby Jones | 31 | 3rd Round | |
| 16 | 12 | Michael De La Cruz | 23 | 11 | Unranked last year |
| 17 | NA | Blake Taylor | 16 | 2nd Round | |
| 17 | NA | Willy Garcia | 16 | 6 | |
| 19 | NA | Jaff Decker | 14 | Padres, Alex Dickerson | |
| 20 | NA | Stolmy Pimentel | 12 | Unranked last year | |
| 21 | NA | Jin-De Jhang | 11 | -2 | |
| 22 | NA | Cody Dickson | 10 | 4th Round | |
| 23 | NA | Brandon Cumpton | 9 | Unranked last year | |
| 24 | NA | Andrew Lambo | 7 | Unranked last year | |
| 25 | NA | Joely Rodriguez | 6 | Unranked last year | |
| 26 | NA | Adrian Sampson | 4 | -10 | |
| 27 | NA | Gift Ngoepe | 3 | -3 | |
| 28 | NA | Jose Osuna | 1 | -10 |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Gerrit Cole, #1
Justin Wilson, #14
Bryan Morris, #15
Traded:
Dilson Herrera, #12 - To the Mets in the Marlon Byrd trade
Alex Dickerson, #20 - To the Padres in the Jaff Decker trade
Victor Black, #21 - To the Mets in the Marlon Byrd trade
Dropped Off:
Kyle McPherson, #13
Andy Oliver, #17
Phil Irwin, #25
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Pirates' 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.