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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.
Carlos Martinez is technically not a rookie, but was ranked on many of the lists. Because of this, I included him in my rankings and gave him a two ranking in the lists he was not eligible. Randal Grichuk was traded to the Cardinals in the middle of the offseason, after some of the lists were created. To offset this, I gave him a ranking of 10 where he was missed.
You can also view the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals 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 St. Louis Cardinals 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 | Oscar Taveras | 849 | 150 | 0 |
| 2 | 2 | Carlos Martinez | 834 | 147 | 1 |
| 3 | 3 | Kolten Wong | 814 | 144 | 3 |
| 4 | 4 | Stephen Piscotty | 800 | 140 | 6 |
| 5 | 6 | Rob Kaminsky | 754 | 131 | 1st Round |
| 6 | 5 | Marco Gonzalez | 728 | 137 | 1st Round |
| 7 | 9 | Randal Grichuk | 693 | 84 | David Freese Trade, Angels |
| 8 | 12 | Tim Cooney | 647 | 42 | 20 |
| 9 | 7 | Carson Kelly | 637 | 90 | 0 |
| 10 | 8 | Alexander Reyes | 630 | 89 | 18 |
| 11 | 10 | James Ramsey | 585 | 82 | 2 |
| 12 | 12 | Charlie Tilson | 434 | 42 | 3 |
| 13 | 11 | Tyrell Jenkins | 364 | 45 | -5 |
| 14 | NA | Mike O'Neill | 269 | 12 | |
| 15 | 12 | Patrick Wisdom | 260 | 42 | -4 |
| 16 | NA | Oscar Mercado | 250 | 2nd Round | |
| 17 | NA | Zach Petrick | 213 | Unranked last year | |
| 18 | NA | Lee Stoppelman | 178 | Unranked last year | |
| 19 | NA | John Gast | 159 | -5 | |
| 20 | NA | Samuel Tuivailala | 146 | Unranked last year | |
| 21 | NA | Cory Jones | 145 | Unranked last year | |
| 22 | 15 | Greg Garcia | 138 | 41 | 0 |
| 23 | NA | Jordan Swagerty | 125 | -5 | |
| 24 | NA | Thomas Pham | 122 | Unranked last year | |
| 25 | NA | Juan Herrera | 113 | Indians, Marc Rzepczynski trade | |
| 26 | NA | Seth Blair | 95 | -6 | |
| 27 | NA | Sam Freeman | 94 | Unranked last year | |
| 28 | NA | Kenny Peoples-Walls | 84 | Unranked last year | |
| 29 | NA | Boone Whiting | 76 | 3 | |
| 30 | NA | Vaughn Bryan | 74 | 35th Round | |
| 31 | NA | Edmundo Sosa | 62 | Unranked last year | |
| 32 | NA | Mike Mayers | 57 | 3rd Round | |
| 33 | NA | Anthony Garcia | 48 | -21 | |
| 33 | NA | Ian McKinney | 48 | 5th Round | |
| 35 | NA | Jacob Wilson | 46 | Unranked last year | |
| 36 | NA | Breyvic Valera | 45 | -4 | |
| 37 | NA | Chris Rivera | 41 | 7th Round | |
| 38 | NA | Steve Bean | 37 | -22 | |
| 39 | NA | Sam Gaviglio | 36 | Unranked last year | |
| 39 | NA | Keith Butler | 36 | Unranked last year | |
| 41 | NA | Nick Petree | 35 | 9th Round | |
| 42 | NA | Colin Walsh | 31 | Unranked last year | |
| 43 | NA | Eric Fornataro | 28 | -15 | |
| 44 | NA | Jonathan Rodriguez | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 44 | NA | Fernando Baez | 19 | Unranked last year | |
| 46 | NA | Audry Perez | 18 | Unranked last year | |
| 47 | NA | Mason Katz | 14 | 4th Round | |
| 48 | NA | Dixon Llorens | 10 | Unranked last year | |
| 49 | NA | Malik Collymore | 9 | 10th Round | |
| 50 | NA | Ryan Sherriff | 5 | Unranked last year | |
| 51 | NA | Ronald Castillo | 3 | Unranked last year | |
| 52 | NA | Jimmy Reed | 2 | 6th Round | |
| 53 | NA | Steven Farinaro | 1 | 11th Round |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Shelby Miller, #2
Trevor Rosenthal, #4
Michael Wacha, #5
Matt Adams, #7
Tyler Lyons, #22
Seth Maness, #27
Traded:
Michael Blazek, #25 - To the Brewers in the John Axford trade
Placed on waivers:
Ryan Jackson, #17
Maikel Cleto, #18
Dropped Off:
Starlin Rodriguez, #20
Victor De Leon, #24
C.J. McElroy, #31
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Cardinals' 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.