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2014 Kansas City Royals Consensus Top 33 Prospects

What is the consensus ranking for each of the Royals' top prospects?

Kyle Zimmer is the Royals' top prospect again this year
Kyle Zimmer is the Royals' top prospect again this year
Christian Petersen

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 Kansas City Royals top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Kansas City Star

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John Sickels)

MLB Prospect Portal

MLB Reports

PineTar Press

Prospect Digest

Rant

Rany on the Royals

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 Kansas City Royals 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 Kyle Zimmer 443 116 0
2 1 Yordano Ventura 436 119 1
3 3 Raul Mondesi 423 112 2
4 6 Miguel Almonte 385 102 8
5 7 Jorge Bonifacio 382 97 -1
6 4 Sean Manaea 381 103 1st Round
7 4 Bubba Starling 357 103 -5
8 8 Hunter Dozier 343 94 1st Round
9 NA Jason Adam 255 -1
10 11 Orlando Calixte 250 23 0
11 10 Cheslor Cuthbert 175 64 -5
12 NA Christian Binford 171 Unranked last year
13 NA Sam Selman 128 -4
14 9 Elier Hernandez 115 66 0
15 NA Zane Evans 93 4th Round
16 NA Chris Dwyer 53 3
16 NA Christian Colon 53 -1
18 12 Cody Reed 49 21 2nd Round
19 NA Cameron Gallagher 40 -6
20 NA Donnie Joseph 34 -3
20 NA Alexis Rivera 34 1
20 NA Bryan Brickhouse 34 -4
23 NA Samir Duenez 32 Venezuelan IFA
24 NA Brett Eibner 27 0
25 NA Lane Adams 26 Unranked last year
26 NA Michael Mariot 23 Unranked last year
27 NA Pedro Fernandez 17 Unranked last year
27 NA Brian Fletcher 17 -1
29 NA John Lamb 7 -22
30 NA Humberto Arteaga 6 -7
31 NA Jack Lopez 4 Unranked last year
32 NA Daniel Rockett 3 9th Round
33 NA Terrance Gore 1 Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Traded:

Kyle Smith, #11 - To the Astros for Justin Maxwell
David Lough, #30 - To the Orioles for Danny Valencia

Dropped Off:

J.C. Sulbaran, #18
Angel Baez, #19
Kenny Diekroeger, #22
Robinson Yambati, #24
Brooks Pounders, #26
Colin Rodgers, #28
Ramon Torres, #28
Wander Franco, #30
Cristian Cano, #32

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Royals' top prospects. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum ranking for each prospect.

Royals2014prospects

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.