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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 (61 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.
I removed Brandon Workman and Drake Britton from the few lists that ranked them as they have technically lost their rookie status.
You can also view the 2013 Boston Red Sox top prospect list.
Sources
Regular Lists
Fire Brand of the American League
Minor League Ball (John Sickels)
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 Boston Red Sox 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 | Xander Bogaerts | 1140 | 180 | 0 |
| 2 | 2 | Henry Owens | 1098 | 174 | 4 |
| 2 | 5 | Jackie Bradley Jr. | 1098 | 166 | 0 |
| 4 | 3 | Garin Cecchini | 1077 | 172 | 1 |
| 5 | 7 | Matt Barnes | 1042 | 164 | -2 |
| 6 | 6 | Blake Swihart | 1040 | 165 | 1 |
| 7 | 8 | Allen Webster | 1037 | 160 | -3 |
| 8 | 9 | Trey Ball | 994 | 158 | 1st Round |
| 9 | 4 | Mookie Betts | 971 | 167 | 14 |
| 10 | 10 | Anthony Ranaudo | 784 | 106 | 7 |
| 11 | NA | Christian Vazquez | 553 | 14 | |
| 12 | NA | Manuel Margot | 491 | 8 | |
| 13 | NA | Deven Marrero | 467 | -4 | |
| 14 | NA | Bryce Brentz | 425 | -6 | |
| 15 | NA | Teddy Stankiewicz | 362 | 2nd Round | |
| 16 | NA | Brian Johnson | 324 | -4 | |
| 17 | NA | Rafael Devers | 222 | IFA | |
| 18 | NA | Ty Buttrey | 214 | -3 | |
| 19 | NA | Jamie Callahan | 210 | Unranked last year | |
| 20 | 11 | Jon Denney | 196 | 53 | 3rd Round |
| 21 | NA | Wendell Rijo | 173 | Unranked last year | |
| 22 | NA | Simon Mercedes | 134 | Unranked last year | |
| 23 | NA | Alex Hassan | 129 | Unranked last year | |
| 24 | NA | Sean Coyle | 124 | -3 | |
| 25 | NA | Luis Diaz | 116 | Unranked last year | |
| 26 | NA | Cody Kukuk | 102 | -4 | |
| 27 | NA | Keury De La Cruz | 101 | -11 | |
| 28 | NA | Tzu-Wei Lin | 99 | Unranked last year | |
| 28 | NA | Myles Smith | 99 | 4th Round | |
| 30 | NA | Daniel McGrath | 88 | IFA | |
| 31 | NA | Alex Wilson | 75 | Unranked last year | |
| 32 | NA | Dalier Hinojosa | 74 | Cuban IFA | |
| 33 | NA | Noe Ramirez | 66 | Unranked last year | |
| 34 | NA | Dan Butler | 65 | Unranked last year | |
| 35 | NA | Travis Shaw | 64 | -7 | |
| 36 | NA | Joe Gunkel | 62 | 18th Round | |
| 37 | NA | Corey Littrell | 54 | 5th Round | |
| 37 | NA | Steven Wright | 54 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Dedgar Jimenez | 53 | Unranked last year | |
| 40 | NA | Henry Ramos | 49 | Unranked last year | |
| 41 | NA | Nick Longhi | 46 | 30th Round | |
| 41 | NA | David Chester | 46 | Unranked last year | |
| 43 | NA | Sergio Gomez | 45 | -14 | |
| 44 | NA | Keith Couch | 44 | Unranked last year | |
| 45 | NA | Pat Light | 43 | -27 | |
| 46 | NA | Mickey Pena | 34 | Unranked last year | |
| 47 | NA | Matthew Price | 20 | Unranked last year | |
| 47 | NA | Heiker Meneses | 20 | Unranked last year | |
| 49 | NA | Heri Quevedo | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 50 | NA | Kyle Martin | 18 | 9th Round | |
| 50 | NA | Victor Acosta | 18 | Unranked last year | |
| 52 | NA | Kolbrin Vitek | 16 | -27 | |
| 53 | NA | Jose Vinicio | 15 | -34 | |
| 54 | NA | Miguel Celestino | 14 | Unranked last year | |
| 55 | NA | Kyle Stroup | 11 | Unranked last year | |
| 56 | NA | Justin Haley | 10 | Unranked last year | |
| 57 | NA | Jonathan Aro | 9 | Unranked last year | |
| 58 | NA | Bryan Hudson | 8 | 15th Round | |
| 59 | NA | Dioscar Romero | 7 | Unranked last year | |
| 60 | NA | Jose Almonte | 6 | Unranked last year |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Brandon Workman, #13
Drake Britton, #14
Traded:
Jose Iglesias, #10 - To the Tigers in the Jake Peavy trade
Brandon Jacobs, #11 - To the White Sox in the Matt Thornton trade
Frank Montas, #23 - To the White Sox in the Jake Peavy trade
Dropped Off:
Brock Holt, #27
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Red Sox 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.