2014 Arizona Diamondbacks Consensus Top 36 Prospects

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 Arizona Diamondbacks top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Instinct

Baseball Prospectus

Batting Leadoff

Bleacher Report

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Inside the Zona

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John Sickels)

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Rant

Top Prospect Alert

Fantasy Lists

Dynasty Sports Empire

Fake Teams

Prospect 361

Razzball

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 Arizona Diamondbacks 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	Archie Bradley	420	120	1
2	3	Braden Shipley	402	113	1st Round
3	2	Chris Owings	394	115	4
4	4	Stryker Trahan	348	100	1
5	8	Jake Lamb	325	76	18
6	5	Aaron Blair	323	99	Comp Balance A
7	7	Brandon Drury	287	96	Justin Upton Trade, Braves
8	9	Jake Barrett	239	48	7
9	10	Justin Williams	210	46	2nd Round
10	12	Jose Martinez	206	22	17
11	6	Andrew Chafin	189	97	-2
12	12	Sergio Alcantara	184	22	Dominican IFA
13	11	Matt Stites	182	23	Ian Kennedy Trade, Padres
14	NA	Zeke Spruill	100		-2
15	NA	Jimmy Sherfy	65		10th Round
16	NA	Daniel Gibson	58		7th Round
17	NA	Daniel Palka	51		3rd Round
18	NA	Felipe Perez	49		1
19	NA	Jamie Westbrook	45		5th Round
20	NA	Brad Keller	40		8th Round
20	NA	Jose Munoz	40		-2
22	NA	Matt McPhearson	35		4th Round
23	NA	Jose Herrera	26		Venezuelan IFA
23	NA	Michael Perez	26		-12
25	NA	Andrew Barbosa	24		Unranked last year
26	NA	Nick Ahmed	22		-12
27	NA	Anthony Meo	16		-14
28	NA	Brandon Sinnery	15		Undrafted FA
29	NA	Brandon Jacobs	13		Mark Trumbo trade, White Sox
29	NA	Evan Marshall	13		-10
31	NA	Charles Brewer	12		-4
31	NA	Ender Inciarte	12		Unranked last year
33	NA	Andrew Velazquez	11		Unranked last year
34	NA	Chuck Taylor	10		Unranked last year
35	NA	Gerson Montilla	7		Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Didi Gregorius, #6
A.J. Pollock, #10

Traded:

Tyler Skaggs, #1 - To the Angels in the Mark Trumbo trade
Matt Davidson, #3 - To the White Sox in the Addison Reed trade
Adam Eaton, #4 - To the White Sox in the Mark Trumbo trade
David Holmberg, #8 - To the Reds in the Heath Bell trade
Yordy Cabrera, #21 - To the Marlins in the Heath Bell trade
Ryan Wheeler, #23 - To the Rockies for Matt Reynolds

Rule 5:

Starling Peralta, #25 - Returned to the Cubs

Dropped Off:

Alfredo Marte, #16
Chase Anderson, #17
Keon Broxton, #21
Evan Marzilli, #25
Jonathan Griffin, #27
J.R. Bradley, #30
Socrates Brito, #30

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Diamondbacks' 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.