2014 San Francisco Giants Consensus Top 72 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 (61 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 San Francisco Giants top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Call to the Pen

Fangraphs

Giants Baseball Blog

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

Minor League Ball (John Sickels)

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Not Another Baseball Blog

Prospect Digest

Rant

Top Prospect Alert

When the Giants Come to Town

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 San Francisco Giants 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	Change
1	1	Kyle Crick	-
2	4	Edwin Escobar	13
3	9	Adalberto Mejia	10
4	2	Clayton Blackburn	-
5	11	Christian Arroyo	1st Round
6	7	Andrew Susac	3
7	3	Chris Stratton	-4
8	5	Mac Williamson	3
9	8	Ty Blach	19
10	10	Heath Hembree	-4
11	6	Martin Agosta	-1
12	NA	Joan Gregorio	13
13	12	Gary Brown	-11
14	NA	Kendry Flores	Unranked last year
15	NA	Joe Panik	-10
16	NA	Keury Mella	Unranked last year
17	NA	Derek Law	Unranked last year
18	NA	Ryder Jones	2nd Round
19	NA	Adam Duvall	-
20	NA	Josh Osich	-6
21	NA	Mike Kickham	-14
22	NA	Chase Johnson	3rd Round
22	NA	Angel Villalona	Unranked last year
24	NA	Ehire Adrianza	-1
25	NA	Johneshwy Fargas	11th Round
26	NA	Stephen Johnson	Unranked last year
26	NA	Ian Gardeck	Unranked last year
28	NA	Jesus Galindo	Unranked last year
29	NA	Jarrett Parker	Unranked last year
30	NA	Matt Duffy	Unranked last year
31	NA	Ricky Oropesa	-12
32	NA	Charles Jones	Unranked last year
33	NA	Jake Dunning	Unranked last year
34	NA	Nick Noonan	Unranked last year
35	NA	Steven Okert	-14
35	NA	Shilo McCall	Unranked last year
37	NA	Mason McVay	Unranked last year
38	NA	Cody Hall	Unranked last year
39	NA	Gustavo Cabrera	-17
40	NA	Mitch Delfino	Unranked last year
40	NA	Alberto Robles	Unranked last year
42	NA	Bryce Bandilla	-18
43	NA	Brian Ragira	4th Round
43	NA	Jeff Arnold	Unranked last year
45	NA	Jacob Dunnington	Unranked last year
46	NA	Tyler Horan	8th Round
46	NA	Phil McCormick	Unranked last year
48	NA	Carter Jurica	Unranked last year
49	NA	Blake Miller	25th Round
50	NA	Brandon Bednar	7th Round
50	NA	Chris Johnson	Unranked last year
52	NA	Joe Kurrasch	Unranked last year
53	NA	Jeremy Sy	Unranked last year
54	NA	Dan Slania	5th Round
54	NA	Tyler Hollick	Unranked last year
56	NA	Pat Young	13th Round
57	NA	Luis Ysla	Venezuelan IFA
58	NA	D.J. Snelton	9th Round
59	NA	Reymi Rodriguez	Dominican IFA
59	NA	Carlos Diaz	Unranked last year
61	NA	Jonah Arenado	16th Round
61	NA	Rando Moreno	Unranked last year
63	NA	John Riley	31st Round
63	NA	Ydwin Villegas	Unranked last year
65	NA	Dylan Brooks	30th Round
65	NA	Brett Bochy	Unranked last year
67	NA	Jose Valdez	Unranked last year
68	NA	Randy Ortiz	Unranked last year
69	NA	Tyler Mizenko	Unranked last year
70	NA	Juan Perez	Unranked last year
71	NA	Roger Kieschnick	-54
72	NA	Chris Gloor	Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Claimed off waivers:

Eric Surkamp, #12 - Claimed by the White Sox

Non-Tendered:

Francisco Peguero, #8

Dropped off:

Chris Heston, #16
Stephen Johnson, #18
E.J. Encinosa, #25
Nathaniel Javier, #25
Juan Perez, #29

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Giants' prospect rankings. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum rankings 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.