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2014 Detroit Tigers Consensus Top 56 Prospects

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

Nick Castellanos is the Tigers' top prospect
Nick Castellanos is the Tigers' top prospect

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.

Tigers2014prospects

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.