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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.
A whole slew of lists came out before the Rays traded for Nate Karns, Matt Andriese, and Curt Casali. In Karns' case, I gave him an eight ranking for the lists that missed him. For Andriese, I gave a 13 ranking for him in only the lists that missed him that also go to 15. I did nothing with Casali's ranking as he wasn't even ranked on every list where he was eligible.
You can also view the 2013 Tampa Bay Rays 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 Tampa Bay Rays 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 | 2 | Jake Odorizzi | 461 | 136 | 3 |
| 2 | 1 | Taylor Guerrieri | 452 | 148 | 0 |
| 3 | 3 | Hak-Ju Lee | 443 | 134 | 2 |
| 4 | 4 | Enny Romero | 434 | 131 | 6 |
| 5 | 9 | Alex Colome | 422 | 81 | 2 |
| 6 | 7 | Nick Ciuffo | 371 | 100 | 1st Round |
| 7 | 6 | Nate Karns | 367 | 115 | Nationals, Jose Lobaton |
| 8 | 10 | Andrew Toles | 331 | 78 | Unranked last year |
| 9 | 8 | Ryne Stanek | 311 | 99 | 1st Round |
| 10 | 12 | Ryan Brett | 288 | 49 | 17 |
| 11 | 15 | Kevin Kiermaier | 285 | 21 | 31st Round |
| 12 | 11 | Blake Snell | 199 | 69 | -4 |
| 13 | 16 | Matt Andriese | 186 | 18 | Padres, Logan Forsythe |
| 14 | NA | Tim Beckham | 167 | -1 | |
| 15 | 5 | Richie Shaffer | 159 | 117 | -9 |
| 16 | 14 | Oscar Hernandez | 149 | 42 | 4 |
| 17 | 16 | Jose Mujica | 139 | 18 | Unranked last year |
| 18 | NA | Riley Unroe | 127 | 2nd Round | |
| 19 | NA | Curt Casali | 109 | Tigers, Kyle Lobstein | |
| 20 | NA | Jake Hager | 100 | -4 | |
| 21 | NA | Jeffrey Ames | 85 | -6 | |
| 22 | NA | C.J. Riefenhauser | 73 | Unranked last year | |
| 23 | NA | Jose Castillo | 70 | -2 | |
| 24 | NA | Josh Sale | 54 | -1 | |
| 25 | NA | Grayson Garvin | 46 | Unranked last year | |
| 26 | NA | Brandon Guyer | 42 | Unranked last year | |
| 27 | NA | Mikie Mahtook | 39 | -16 | |
| 28 | NA | Justin O'Conner | 36 | Unranked last year | |
| 29 | NA | Dylan Floro | 34 | Unranked last year | |
| 30 | NA | Tyler Goeddel | 32 | -13 | |
| 31 | NA | Cristian Toribio | 13 | Unranked last year | |
| 32 | 13 | Mike Montgomery | 12 | 45 | -18 |
| 33 | NA | Jacob Faria | 10 | Unranked last year | |
| 34 | NA | Thomas Milone | 7 | Unranked last year | |
| 35 | NA | David Rodriguez | 6 | Unranked last year | |
| 36 | NA | Kirby Yates | 4 | Unranked last year | |
| 37 | NA | Joey Rickard | 3 | Unranked last year | |
| 37 | NA | Kean Wong | 3 | 4th Round | |
| 39 | NA | Luke Maile | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Steve Geltz | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 41 | NA | Andres Gonzalez | 1 | Unranked last year |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Wil Myers, #1
Chris Archer, #3
Alex Torres, #18
Traded:
Drew Vettleson, #9 - To the Nationals in the Nate Karns trade
Felipe Rivero, #12 - To the Nationals in the Nate Karns trade
Derek DIetrich, #19 - To the Marlins for Yunel Escobar
Todd Glaesmann, #21 - To the Diamondbacks in the Heath Bell trade
Jesse Hahn, #26 - To the Padres in the Logan Forsythe trade
Dropped Off:
Parker Markel, #24
Brandon Martin, #25
Patrick Leonard, #27
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Rays' 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.