2014 Chicago White Sox Consensus Top 33 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.

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.

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.