Cumulative Top Prospect List

Updated 2/6/13 to include MLB's changed list after the trade with the A's and Keith Law's list for ESPN.

I enjoy the top prospect list exercise.  It is interesting to see which players are valued by different analyst.  Every year, I try to keep up with the lists when they come out and compare them to each other.  I also like to see what the consensus thought is about players.

Below is the cumulative rankings that have been compiled thus far.  This includes the list from 14 different sources: Baseball America (top 10), Baseball Prospectus (top 10), The Crawfish Boxes (top 30), Fangraphs (top 15), MLB.com (top 20), MinorLeagueBall (top 20), Bleacher Report (top 10), Baseball Prospect Nation (top15), MLB Dirt (top 15), Scouting Book (top 20), Baseball Instinct (top 21), Perfect Game (top 10), Astros County (top 25) and Keith Law - ESPN (top 10).

I continue to tweak this process.  There are two cumulative ranking orders.  The first is the cumulative ranking based on # of list they appeared on and the average ranking. This list is the true consensus as it rewards a player for making more list and lowers a player who was highly ranked but appeared on very few list.  The second cumulative ranking is based on average ranking and then # of list the player appears on.  This rewards a high ranking regardless of how often a player was ranked.  The color shade of the name indicates how they were obtained. The key is at the bottom of the list. Here is a link to the google drive spreadsheet for those who don't want to scroll in the window.

Here are some observations about the cumulative list thus far (updated 12/31/12):  

• There is consensus on the top 11 players on the list.  Six appear on all 14 list, and the five others appear on at least 10 list. 

• There are a few prospects with wide disparity of ranking:
• Jonathan Villar is ranked #6 (4x), #7, #8, #9, #11 (2x), # 12, #15, and #25. 
• Kevin Comer is ranked #9, #14, and #20.  He was also mentioned as an "others" by John Sickels
• Carlos Perez is ranked as high as #9 and as low as #19.  He appeared on six list. 
• Nolan Fontana is ranked as high as #9 and as low as #19.  He appears on seven list. 
• Joe Musgrove is ranked as high as #10 and as low as #22.  He appeared on five list.
• Teoscar Hernandez, Jose Cisnero, Brad Peacock, and Kyle Weiland all benefit from just appearing on one list. 

•  There are 49 players who have been included on a list at this time.  Here is the break down of how they were acquired:
• Via Luhnow Trade -17
• Via Draft 2012 -11
• Via Wade Trade - 6
• Via Draft 2011 - 3
• Via Draft 2010 -4
• Via Rule 5 Draft 2012 - 2
• Via Draft 2009 - 1
• Via Draft 2008 - 1
• Via International Free Agency (2007,2008, 2010) -4

•  That makes 30 out of the 49 have been acquired since Luhnow took over.

•  12 of the players have played in Greeneville.