2014 Detroit Tigers Consensus Top 56 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.

Robbie Ray was not ranked on every list, since he was traded to the team mid-offseason. I gave him a ranking of three on the lists that missed him.

You can also view the 2013 Detroit Tigers top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

Lynn Henning

MLB.com

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Rant

The MLB Nation

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 Detroit Tigers 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	Nick Castellanos	650	200	0
2	3	Robbie Ray	624	191	Doug Fister trade, Nationals
3	2	Jonathon Crawford	622	194	1st Round
4	4	Jake Thompson	604	188	1
5	6	Eugenio Suarez	543	169	3
6	11	Corey Knebel	500	85	1st Round
7	8	James McCann	444	134	7
8	7	Devon Travis	412	144	11
9	13	Endrys Briceno	372	45	Unranked last year
10	5	Steven Moya	346	175	0
11	9	Daniel Fields	304	95	2
12	15	Drew VerHagen	298	43	6
13	12	Tyler Collins	272	46	-4
14	NA	Casey Crosby	233		-8
15	NA	Melvin Mercedes	148		8
15	NA	Domingo Leyba	148		Unranked last year
17	14	Kevin Ziomek	138	44	2nd Round
18	16	Austin Schotts	129	42	-11
19	NA	Javier Betancourt	120		Unranked last year
20	NA	Harold Castro	104		-8
20	NA	Kyle Lobstein	104		Rays, Curt Casali
22	NA	Steven Fuentes	98		Unranked last year
23	NA	Buck Farmer	89		5th Round
24	NA	Austin Kubitzka	77		4th Round
25	NA	Jose Valdez	66		Unranked last year
26	NA	Kyle Ryan	58		Unranked last year
27	NA	Wilsen Palacios	57		Unranked last year
28	NA	Zach Reininger	55		8th Round
29	NA	Jose Ortega	54		-10
30	NA	Jordan Lennerton	53		Unranked last year
31	16	Jordan John	49	42	Unranked last year
32	NA	Jeff Thompson	44		3rd Round
33	NA	Joe Jimenez	43		Puerto Rican NDFA
34	NA	Ramon Cabrera	37		-9
35	NA	Calvin Drummond	34		6th Round
35	NA	Dean Green	34		Unranked last year
37	NA	Warwick Saupold	27		Unranked last year
38	NA	Willy Adames	26		Unranked last year
39	NA	Anthony Castro	25		Unranked last year
40	NA	Francisco Martinez	24		Traded from Mariners for cash
41	NA	Will Clinard	23		-10
41	NA	Matt Hoffman	23		-15
43	NA	Franklin Navarro	22		Unranked last year
44	NA	Jeff Holm	21		Unranked last year
45	NA	Angel Nesbitt	18		Unranked last year
46	NA	Ryan Robowski	17		Unranked last year
47	NA	Tommy Collier	15		Unranked last year
48	NA	Kasey Coffman	14		10th Round
49	NA	Elys Escobar	13		Unranked last year
50	NA	Aaron Westlake	11		Unranked last year
51	NA	Jade Todd	9		Unranked last year
52	NA	Josh Turley	8		Unranked last year
53	NA	Will Startup	7		Independent Leagues
54	NA	Connor Harrell	5		7th Round
55	NA	Chad Green	3		11th Round
56	NA	Chase Edwards	2		24th Round
NA	10	Jose Alvarez		86	Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Bruce Rondon, #3
Hernan Perez, #17

Traded:

Avisail Garcia, #2 - To the White Sox in the Jose Iglesias trade
Danry Vasquez, #4 - To the Astros for Jose Veras

Rule 5:

Jeff Kobernus, #19 - Returned to the Nationals
Jesus Ustariz, #26 - Rule 5 to the Cardinals

Dropped Off:

Brenny Paulino, #11
Dean Green, #15
Joe Rogers, #16
Montreal Robertson, #19
Logan Ehlers, #24
Alex Burgos, #26
Kenny Faulk, #29
Michael Morrison, #30
Tyler Gibson, #31

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Tigers' 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

. . .

Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.