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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 Baltimore Orioles 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 Baltimore Orioles 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 | 2 | Kevin Gausman | 350 | 81 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | Dylan Bundy | 347 | 83 | -1 |
| 3 | 5 | Eduardo Rodriguez | 312 | 68 | 1 |
| 4 | 3 | Hunter Harvey | 307 | 74 | 1st Round |
| 5 | 4 | Jonathan Schoop | 294 | 71 | -2 |
| 6 | 6 | Mike Wright | 258 | 61 | 4 |
| 7 | 9 | Tim Berry | 195 | 28 | 6 |
| 8 | 14 | Chance Sisco | 163 | 22 | 2nd Round |
| 9 | 8 | Michael Ohlman | 159 | 38 | 20 |
| 10 | 13 | Zach Davies | 128 | 24 | 7 |
| 11 | 10 | Josh Hart | 122 | 27 | 1st Round |
| 12 | 7 | Henry Urrutia | 119 | 44 | 17 |
| 13 | 10 | Branden Kline | 74 | 27 | -6 |
| 14 | 17 | Adrian Marin | 72 | 8 | -6 |
| 15 | 12 | Christian Walker | 63 | 26 | -1 |
| 16 | 15 | Parker Bridwell | 48 | 13 | -4 |
| 17 | 16 | Stephen Tarpley | 45 | 10 | 3rd Round |
| 18 | NA | Dariel Alvarez | 33 | Cuban IFA | |
| 19 | NA | Francisco Peguero | 29 | Free agent | |
| 20 | NA | Caleb Joseph | 22 | Unranked last year | |
| 21 | NA | Trey Mancini | 13 | 8th Round | |
| 22 | NA | Steven Brault | 8 | 11th Round | |
| 23 | NA | Conor Bierfeldt | 7 | 29th Round | |
| 24 | NA | Lex Rutledge | 6 | -2 | |
| 25 | NA | Michael Almanzar | 4 | Rule 5, Red Sox | |
| 25 | NA | Drew Dosch | 4 | 7th Round | |
| 25 | NA | Travis Seabrooke | 4 | 5th Round | |
| 28 | NA | Tyler Wilson | 3 | -1 | |
| 28 | NA | Mike Belfiore | 3 | -8 | |
| 30 | NA | Ofelky Peralta | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 30 | NA | Clay Schrader | 2 | -10 |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Steve Johnson, #16
Traded:
Nicky Delmonico, #5 - To the Brewers for Francisco Rodriguez
L.J. Hoes, #6 - To the Astros in the Bud Norris trade
Xavier Avery, #9 - To the Mariners for Mike Morse
Josh Hader, #15 - To the Astros in the Bud Norris trade
Devin Jones, #25 - To the Padres for Brad Brach
Ty Kelly, #26 - To the Mariners for Eric Thames
Retired:
Tyler Townsend, #32
Dropped Off:
Glynn Davis, #11
Torsten Boss, #18
Jason Esposito, #19
Hector Veloz, #22
Brady Wager, #22
Bobby Bundy, #28
Brenden Webb, #31
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Orioles' 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.