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2014 Chicago White Sox Consensus Top 33 Prospects

What is the consensus ranking for each of the White Sox top prospects?

Jose Abreu is a bit old for a prospect, but he leads the way for the White Sox
Jose Abreu is a bit old for a prospect, but he leads the way for the White Sox

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.

Jose Abreu and Matt Davidson were not ranked on every list. I gave them a two and three ranking, respectively on the lists that did not rank them. I also gave Marcus Semien a rank of five on the BR ranking. It seemed like more an oversight than a real non-ranking, and it messed up the overall results.

You can also view the 2013 Chicago White Sox top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Instinct

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Chi City Sports

Fangraphs

Future Sox

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John Sickels)

MLB.com

MLB Prospect Portal

Prospect Digest

Rant

South Side Sox

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 Chicago White Sox 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 Jose Abreu 387 99 Cuban IFA
2 5 Erik Johnson 384 91 2
3 2 Matt Davidson 374 93 Addison Reed trade, Diamondbacks
4 6 Marcus Semien 336 80 14
5 2 Tim Anderson 330 93 1st Round
6 4 Courtney Hawkins 328 92 -5
7 7 Trayce Thompson 289 78 -5
8 10 Chris Beck 283 38 1
9 9 Tyler Danish 241 52 2nd Round
10 8 Micah Johnson 218 61 Unranked last year
11 12 Carlos Sanchez 186 18 -8
12 14 Danny Webb 150 17 Unranked last year
13 NA Jacob May 138 3rd Round
14 NA Francellis Montas 84 Jake Peavy trade, Red Sox
15 NA Scott Snodgress 81 -7
16 NA Andrew Mitchell 70 4th Round
17 NA Chris Bassitt 67 Unranked last year
17 11 Keon Barnum 67 34 -7
19 12 Micker Adolfo Zapata 59 18 Dominican IFA
20 14 Adam Engel 48 17 19th Round
21 NA Trey Michalczewski 41 7th Round
22 16 Jared Mitchell 33 16 -15
23 NA Jacob Petricka 25 -10
24 NA Leury Garcia 22 Rangers, Alex Rios trade
25 NA Eric Surkamp 17 Claimed off waivers, Giants
26 NA Chris Freudenberg 16 8th Round
27 NA Adam Lopez 14 Unranked last year
28 NA Rangel Ravelo 11 Unranked last year
29 NA Matt Ball 7 11th Round
29 NA Cleuluis Rondon 7 Jake Peavy trade, Red Sox
31 NA Braulio Ortiz 6 Unranked last year
32 NA Myles Jaye 3 -16
33 NA Jefferson Olacio 1 Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Andre Rienzo, #6
Josh Phegley, #21

Traded:

Jeff Soptic, #27 - To the Giants for Conor Gillaspie

Outrighted:

Simon Castro, #12
Jhan Marinez, #21

DFAed:

Santos Rodriguez, #24

Dropped Off:

Keenyn Walker, #5
Nestor Molina, #11
Joey DeMichele, #14
Charlie Leesman, #15
Brandon Brennan, #17
Sammy Ayala, #19
Tyler Saladino, #20
Andy Wilkins, #21
Kevan Smith, #24
Kyle Hansen, #24
Luis Castillo, #28
Todd Kibby, #29

Visual Representation

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

Whitesox2014prospects

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.