What is the consensus ranking for each of the Yankees' top 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.
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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
Fantasy Lists
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
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Chris St. John is a writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @stealofhome.