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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 (31 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 Atlanta Braves top prospect list.
Sources
Regular Lists
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 Atlanta Braves 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 | Lucas Sims | 450 | 120 | 2 |
2 | 3 | Christian Bethancourt | 423 | 107 | 2 |
3 | 2 | J.R. Graham | 405 | 114 | -1 |
4 | 6 | Jason Hursh | 389 | 98 | 1st Round |
5 | 4 | Mauricio Cabrera | 381 | 106 | 1 |
6 | 4 | Jose Peraza | 363 | 106 | 2 |
7 | 7 | Tommy La Stella | 344 | 79 | 3 |
8 | 8 | Victor Caratini | 284 | 47 | 2nd Round |
9 | 8 | Cody Martin | 236 | 47 | 4 |
10 | NA | David Hale | 194 | 15 | |
11 | 11 | Wes Parsons | 175 | 43 | Undrafted Free Agent |
12 | NA | Aaron Northcraft | 154 | 4 | |
13 | 11 | Victor Reyes | 135 | 43 | Unranked last year |
14 | 13 | Josh Elander | 105 | 22 | 5 |
15 | NA | Johan Camargo | 103 | Unranked last year | |
16 | NA | Shae Simmons | 100 | Unranked last year | |
17 | 10 | Edward Salcedo | 94 | 46 | -7 |
18 | NA | Kyle Wren | 82 | 8th Round | |
19 | NA | Carlos Salazar | 81 | 3rd Round | |
20 | NA | Ian Thomas | 77 | Indy Leagues | |
21 | NA | Kyle Kubitza | 71 | 2 | |
22 | NA | Todd Cunningham | 70 | -4 | |
23 | NA | Luis Merejo | 32 | -11 | |
24 | NA | Carlos Perez | 26 | Unranked last year | |
25 | NA | Juan Jaime | 24 | -6 | |
26 | NA | Alec Grosser | 23 | 11th Round | |
27 | NA | Matt Lipka | 22 | -13 | |
28 | NA | Andry Ubiera | 17 | 0 | |
29 | NA | Ryan Buchter | 16 | Unranked last year | |
30 | 14 | Robby Hefflinger | 14 | 21 | Unranked last year |
31 | NA | Gus Schlosser | 13 | Unranked last year | |
32 | NA | Mark Lamm | 10 | Unranked last year | |
33 | NA | Ronan Pacheco | 9 | Unranked last year | |
34 | NA | John Cornely | 7 | -15 | |
35 | NA | Bryan De La Rosa | 6 | Unranked last year | |
36 | NA | Wilson Rivera | 2 | Unranked last year | |
37 | NA | Eric Pfisterer | 1 | Unranked last year |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Julio Teheran, #1
Alex Wood, #7
Evan Gattis, #9
Joey Terdoslavich, #15
Traded:
Sean Gilmartin, #5 - To the Twins in the Ryan Doumit trade
Dropped Off:
Navery Moore, #17
William Beckwith, #22
Carlos Franco, #24
David Peterson, #25
Yeral Torres, #27
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Braves' 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.