2014 Seattle Mariners Consensus Top 26 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 Seattle Mariners top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Instinct

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Bullpen Banter

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

Lookout Landing

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Seattle Clubhouse

Top Prospect Alert

Fantasy Lists

Dynasty Sports Empire

Fake Teams

Prospect 361

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 Seattle Mariners 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	Taijuan Walker	350	75	0
2	2	D.J. Peterson	335	71	1st Round
3	3	James Paxton	314	70	2
4	5	Victor Sanchez	257	60	3
5	4	Edwin Diaz	231	64	11
6	10	Danny Hultzen	220	18	-3
6	7	Austin Wilson	220	58	2nd Round
8	13	Tyler Pike	215	16	3
9	9	Chris Taylor	213	22	Unranked last year
10	6	Luiz Gohara	196	59	3
11	8	Tyler Marlette	174	35	13
12	10	Gabriel Guerrero	125	18	2
13	NA	Julio Morban	85		7
14	13	Stefen Romero	83	16	-4
15	NA	Patrick Kivelhan	70		0
16	NA	Ketel Marte	35		Unranked last year
16	NA	Dominic Leone	35		Unranked last year
18	12	Ji-Man Choi	29	17	Unranked last year
19	NA	Carson Smith	26		10
20	NA	Xavier Avery	20		Michael Morse Trade, Orioles
20	13	Tyler O'Neill	20	16	3rd Round
22	NA	Jabari Blash	14		7
23	NA	Abe Almonte	12		Yankees, Shawn Kelley
24	NA	Lars Huijer	8		Unranked last year
25	NA	Timmy Lopes	6		-6
26	NA	Greifer Andrade	5		Venezuelan IFA

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Mike Zunino, #2
Nick Franklin, #4
Brandon Maurer, #6
Brad Miller, #8
Carter Capps, #9

Traded:

Francisco Martinez, #27 - To the Tigers for cash

Retired:

Vinnie Catricala

Dropped Off:

Stephen Pryor, #12
Joe DeCarlo, #18
Leon Landry, #20
Erasmo Ramirez, #22
Martin Peguero, #23
Jack Marder, #24
Jordan Shipers, #26
Chance Ruffin, #27
Anthony Fernandez, #29
John Hicks, #32
Guillermo Pimentel, #32

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Mariners' 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.