2014 New York Yankees Consensus Top 58 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 (51 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.

Also, not many sites ranked Masahiro Tanaka as a prospect, for very good reasons. But, some did and some people may be interested in where he fits in reference to the Yankees' minor league players. Of the three sites that did rank him, each put him as number one. So in the consensus list, I gave him a ranking of number one in each of the lists that did not rank him, but left the other rankings the same.

You can also view the 2013 New York Yankees top prospect list.

Sources

Regular Lists

An A-Blog for A-Rod

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Bleacher Report

Bronx Baseball Daily

Bronx Empire

Fangraphs

Grading on the Curve

Keith Law (ESPN)

MLB Draft Insider

MLB Prospect Portal

Pinstripe Alley

Pinstripe Pundits

Prospect Digest

Rant

River Ave Blues

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 New York Yankees 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	Masariho Tanaka	850	200	Japanese signing
2	2	Gary Sanchez	848	198	-1
3	4	Mason Williams	794	184	-1
4	5	Slade Heathcott	748	183	-
5	8	Tyler Austin	741	138	-2
6	3	Eric Jagielo	678	190	1st Round
7	NA	Ian Clarkin	638	0	1st Round
8	12	J.R. Murphy	606	86	7
9	9	Greg Bird	602	131	13
10	6	Aaron Judge	595	180	1st Round
11	13	Jose Ramirez	536	44	-1
12	7	Rafael De Paula	475	173	-
13	11	Manny Banuelos	431	124	-5
14	NA	Luis Severino	399	0	Unranked last year
15	NA	Jose Campos	394	0	-10
16	NA	Ty Hensley	369	0	-9
17	10	Gosuke Katoh	335	129	2nd Round
18	NA	Abiatal Avelino	245	0	Unranked last year
19	NA	Mark Montgomery	226	0	-10
20	NA	Luis Torrens	224	0	4
21	NA	Nik Turley	193	0	-6
22	NA	Peter O'Brien	192	0	Unranked last year
23	NA	Bryan Mitchell	174	0	-9
24	NA	Miguel Andujar	155	0	Unranked last year
25	NA	Ramon Flores	121	0	-8
26	NA	Robert Refsnyder	107	0	Unranked last year
27	NA	Shane Greene	91	0	Unranked last year
28	NA	Angelo Gumbs	69	0	-22
29	NA	Gabe Encinas	53	0	Unranked last year
30	NA	Dellin Betances	52	0	-6
30	NA	Vidal Nuno	52	0	Unranked last year
32	NA	Ben Gamel	48	0	Unranked last year
33	NA	Tyler Wade	44	0	4th Round
34	NA	Dante Bichette Jr.	40	0	-21
35	NA	Jordan Cote	36	0	-9
36	NA	Rookie Davis	34	0	Unranked last year
37	NA	Cito Culver	27	0	Unranked last year
38	NA	Corban Joseph	26	0	-11
39	NA	Dan Camarena	25	0	Unranked last year
40	NA	Tyler Webb	24	0	10th Round
41	NA	Cesar Cabral	22	0	Unranked last year
41	NA	Chase Whitley	22	0	Unranked last year
41	NA	Brady Lail	22	0	Unranked last year
44	NA	Cesar Vargas	18	0	Unranked last year
45	NA	Rony Bautista	15	0	Unranked last year
46	NA	Matt Tracy	14	0	Unranked last year
47	NA	Giovanny Gallegos	13	0	Unranked last year
48	NA	Joey Maher	12	0	Unranked last year
49	NA	Angel Rincon	10	0	Unranked last year
50	NA	Nick Goody	9	0	-22
51	NA	Dallas Martinez	8	0	Unranked last year
52	NA	James Pazos	7	0	Unranked last year
53	NA	Thairo Estrada	6	0	Unranked last year
54	NA	Caleb Smith	5	0	14th Round
55	NA	Danny Burawa	4	0	Unranked last year
56	NA	Jake Cave	3	0	Unranked last year
57	NA	Kendall Coleman	2	0	11th Round
58	NA	Fred Lewis	1	0	Unranked last year

2013 prospects not on 2014 list

Graduated:

Austin Romine, #19
Adam Warren, #20
Zoilo Almonte, #21
David Adams, #23

Traded:

Corey Black, #18 - To the Cubs for Alfonso Soriano

Rule 5:

Ravel Santana, #28 - To the Astros
Tom Kahnle, #30 - To the Rockies

Dropped off:

Brett Marshall, #11

Visual Representation

Here is a chart of the Yankees' 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

. . .

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