What is the consensus ranking for each of the Padres' 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.
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.
Jesse Hahn was traded to the team very late into the off-season after most lists were already out. I gave him an eight ranking on all the lists that missed him, which was the average of his ranking for the two lists on which he appeared.
You can also view the 2013 San Diego Padres 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 San Diego Padres 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 | 3 | Austin Hedges | 411 | 136 | 0 |
| 2 | 2 | Matt Wisler | 401 | 143 | 5 |
| 3 | 1 | Max Fried | 397 | 146 | -1 |
| 4 | 3 | Hunter Renfroe | 370 | 136 | 1st Round |
| 5 | 6 | Casey Kelly | 355 | 125 | 0 |
| 6 | 5 | Rymer Liriano | 333 | 128 | -2 |
| 7 | 7 | Jesse Hahn | 322 | 115 | Rays, Logan Forsythe trade |
| 8 | 8 | Jace Peterson | 292 | 110 | 7 |
| 9 | 10 | Keyvius Sampson | 261 | 92 | 4 |
| 10 | 11 | Burch Smith | 243 | 68 | 13 |
| 11 | 9 | Joe Ross | 229 | 93 | -3 |
| 12 | 12 | Zach Eflin | 168 | 45 | 0 |
| 13 | 15 | Reymond Fuentes | 118 | 21 | 14 |
| 14 | 18 | Cory Spangenberg | 93 | 17 | -5 |
| 15 | 13 | Dustin Peterson | 90 | 27 | 2nd Round |
| 16 | 14 | Alex Dickerson | 89 | 25 | Pirates, Jaff Decker trade |
| 17 | 16 | Walker Weickel | 88 | 19 | -6 |
| 18 | NA | Franchy Cordero | 67 | Unranked last year | |
| 19 | NA | Travis Jankowski | 63 | -2 | |
| 20 | NA | Gabriel Quintana | 49 | Unranked last year | |
| 21 | NA | Franmil Reyes | 47 | Unranked last year | |
| 22 | NA | Adys Portillo | 46 | -12 | |
| 23 | NA | Yeison Asencio | 44 | Unranked last year | |
| 24 | 17 | Joe Wieland | 42 | 18 | -10 |
| 25 | NA | Jordan Paroubeck | 32 | 2nd Round | |
| 26 | NA | Juan Oramas | 31 | Unranked last year | |
| 27 | NA | Andy Lockett | 22 | Unranked last year | |
| 28 | NA | Donn Roach | 19 | -12 | |
| 29 | NA | Josh VanMeter | 17 | 5th Round | |
| 30 | NA | Mallex Smith | 15 | Unranked last year | |
| 31 | NA | Carlos Belen | 13 | -7 | |
| 32 | NA | Corey Adamson | 11 | Unranked last year | |
| 33 | NA | Leonel Campos | 10 | Unranked last year | |
| 34 | NA | Ruben Mejia | 8 | Unranked last year | |
| 34 | NA | Tommy Medica | 8 | Unranked last year | |
| 36 | NA | Jeremy Baltz | 7 | -7 | |
| 37 | NA | Alberth Martinez | 5 | Unranked last year | |
| 38 | NA | Kevin Quackenbush | 4 | -13 | |
| 39 | NA | Jose Urena | 2 | Unranked last year | |
| 40 | NA | John Barbato | 1 | -18 |
2013 prospects not on 2014 list
Graduated:
Jedd Gyorko, #3
Robbie Erlin, #6
Traded:
Brad Boxberger, #20 - To the Rays in the Logan Forsythe trade
Matt Andriese, #21 - To the Rays in the Logan Forsythe trade
Matt Stites, #27 - To the Diamondbacks in the Ian Kennedy trade
Released:
James Darnell, #18
Edinson Rincon, #25
Dropped Off:
Fernando Perez, #19
Visual Representation
Here is a chart of the Padres' 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.