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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 Kansas City Royals 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 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.
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.