With the release of Baseball America's top 100 prospects list today, my three preferred prospect sources have all published their lists. I believe Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus can be seen without subscriptions:
- Baseball America Top 100, published 2-21-12
- Kevin Goldstein's Top 101 for Baseball Prospectus, published 2-13-12
- Keith Law's Top 100 for ESPN, published 2-9-12
A few notable differences in the lists:
- All three sources agree on Mike Trout of the Angels, Bryce Harper of the Nationals, and Matt Moore of the Rays as the game's top three prospects, but all rank them in a different order.
- With a #12 ranking, Law is much higher on Rays shortstop prospect Hak-Ju Lee than Goldstein (65) or BA (44). He's also notably higher on Arodys Vizcaino of the Braves, Casey Kelly of the Padres, Mason Williams of the Yankees, Drew Hutchison of the Blue Jays, Cheslor Cuthbert of the Royals, Joe Ross of the Padres, and Daniel Corcino of the Reds. The others considered Brad Peacock of the A's and Cory Spangenberg of the Padres as top 80 prospects, but Law left them off his list.
- Goldstein likes Oscar Taveras of the Cardinals, Michael Choice of the Athletics, Brandon Jacobs of the Red Sox, Robbie Erlin of the Padres, Daniel Norris, and Jedd Gyorko of the Padres more than the others. He left Mike Montgomery of the Royals, Taylor Jungmann of the Brewers, and Nick Franklin of the Mariners off his list entirely.
- BA is higher on Montgomery, Yonder Alonso of the Padres, and Matt Szczur of the Cubs than the others. They didn't exclude anyone who was highly ranked by both of the other outlets.
Law’s needs a subscription.
This has always perplexed me. Why anyone would pay an insider fee to read what Keith Law has to say is beyond me.
Because he’s a great analyst and pretty hilariously snarky?
If I weren’t tremendously poor, I’d pay for it. I have in the past.
Great analyst and hilariously snarky is quite a subjective statement.
*shrug* That’s why I’d pay it. I’m not sure how you’d be paying for an objective payoff, here.
Don’t they have pretty good fantasy baseball analysis in Insider? I think I used to read that when I had Insider and played fantasy baseball.
i’ve never seen anything from insider that wasn’t covered better elsewhere for free
though there are exceptions, donating to good analysts whose work is open >>> paying for access
I see stuff every day from Insider that free stuff doesn’t touch. I have no stake in it, I honestly think it’s easily worth way beyond $40 for a serious baseball fan.
notsureifsrsbaseballfan
Buy the magazine for like $1, light every copy on fire as it is most useful as kindling and get a free year of insider. If you can’t deduce the net gain in that than the content is probably over your head anyway
you explain that to me and than i’ll explain homophones to you
There is no call to bring anyone’s private life into the discussion.
I see stuff every day from Insider that free stuff doesn’t touch. I have no stake in it, I honestly think it’s easily worth way beyond $40 for a serious baseball fan.
My experience with reading Keith Law shows me that he’s a Mets homer who hates the Phillies.
Not nearly as bad as the guy who writes for the ESPN Sweetspot who picked the Phillies to miss the playoffs last year, though.
… Mets… Homer?!?!?
What
I’ve noticed that most analysts hate your team. I hear some even think that your favorite prospect isn’t as good as you think he is. It’s probably personal.
Yeah, I have never posted anything about analysts preferences before this post.
I’ve noticed that you’re just fishing for likes in a pathetic attempt to find love in a world in which you’ve found none.
Most good analysts always get accused of bias because some fans thinks their team is either not getting covered enough or was slighted. I’ve also heard many accuse him of being a Red sox homer.
You’d think if he favored any team, it would be the Blue Jays, since he worked for them for 5 years…
FYI: If you get a subscription to their magazine (which is fairly inexpensive), you get a subscription to Insider for free.
Astros debated paying a lot more for his services.
a subscription to google maybe
ESPN Keith Law’s top 100 still requires a subscription, unfortunately.
True, thanks. I signed out and still saw it, but then when I left and went back I did not.
For those complaining about Insider Status… You can get Insider for FREE with ESPN the Magazine. Google cheap subscriptions and you can get the magazine for a year for around $10. Last year I got a year for $4.
but then they’d send you those dreadful magazines
Digital delivery?!?!
$10 for spam? sold
Clever.
If you want the insider content but not the magazine, then that is a good solution.
If you want neither, then you don’t have to worry about it.
right. i am making jokes, not arguments
huh. if i make a top 100 list maybe i can charge for access
Or you could just drive revenue from ads like every other site on the internet. (besides, BA, ESPN, baseballpro of course)
that was just another keith law joke. i’m gonna stop now
go bundy
That one’s on me. I’m just used to MLBTR posters making serious comments like that.
I apologize.
classic.
They need to get with the times, save trees and have an electronic version that noone will read.
They do.
Exactly. If there were any truth in advertising it would be called ESPN the Picturebook.
What’s a magazine?
What’s a magazine?
Yep, sure does. Kind’ve asinine for you guys to talk about something which is protected by a paywall.
Um, no…we have linked to Insider from Day 1, because without it we’d be giving you an incomplete picture of what’s good.
Um, no…we have linked to Insider from Day 1, because without it we’d be giving you an incomplete picture of what’s good.
Dear Baseball America, How can Lavarnaway not be in the Top 100 ?
Because you can’t spell his name right.
Sorry didnt mean to anger the spelling police.. Didnt realize a simple keying error meant personal attack
And I didn’t realize a simple joke was so hurtful. I guess we’re both in the wrong.
100 is an arbitrary number that has no real significance; the truth is, once you get past the elite prospects it goes much deeper than 100 with guys you could put in most any order and not be too far off. If one person says a player is the 120th best prospect, and another guy says he’s the 80th best, it wouldn’t really make any difference.
Where did Law rank Trevor May and Jesse Biddle?
May in bottom half, didn’t rank Biddle
What about Jacob Turner and Nick Castellanos?
May 76 Biddle not rated which is not the 1st time.
Law’s is a joke in comparison to the others anyways, so you’re not missing much by not shelling out the cash.
In all honesty, if you want to spend some money…just get the BA handbook. They’re awesome.
And you get to see Jim Callis’s own individual top 50 list, which, IMO, is always the best. That guy knows his stuff.
Explain to me why you trust a guy who is not a scout and has no background in scouting over someone who sees thousands of players in person every year?
My guess is that Callis is networked deeper into scouting circles than Law is given his affiliation with Baseball America. The material that you want to put the most stock in is that which comes from the keyboard of the guy who talks to the most scouts across the various levels of the minors, as it is practically impossible for any one person to see more than a handful of top prospects for more than a handful of times over a year or two.
The guys though who do not and make their lists typically contact GM and Scouts all over the place to get their insight. So they tend to take everyones opinion as opposed to their own.
keith makes it clear that his top 100 comes from personally scouting the players as well as getting the opinions of some trusted scouts throughout baseball. He was the 2nd in command in TOR (or something like that – Special Assistant to the GM) so it’s not like he can’t evaluate players.
Or, the word ‘was’ would be evidence to the contrary…
Or, the word ‘was’ would be evidence to the contrary…
The guys though who do not and make their lists typically contact GM and Scouts all over the place to get their insight. So they tend to take everyones opinion as opposed to their own.
“Middle”brooks was No. 50 before Yoenis Cespedes signed. Pure coincidence.” – Great analysis Baseball America
No love for Sickels and his work?
i don’t like sickels myself, but there are at least a half dozen other guys/groups out there that provide good information. BA/BP/KL are just the big 3
Speaking as a fan, I couldn’t help but laugh when Sickels actually ranked Nestor Molina as the top prospect in the Jays system before the Santos trade, when everyone else didn’t even consider him a top 10 prospect in their organization.
Maybe he’s just a Blue Jays homer, but his touch on baseball objectivity needs to be in question at times.
Worthy of a note also: Molina didn’t crack the top 100 of BA, the top 101 of BP, and didn’t crack Keith Law’s top 100.
KLaw is one of the best analysts around. I always think it’s funny that homer fans accuse him of being biased against their teams when he doesn’t rank their prospects high enough. If you really think you know better than he does, write your own list where every Phillies (or Mets, Cardinals, etc.) prospect is in the top 15. What good does it do Law or any analyst for that matter, to be biased against one team?
It has far more to do with how different his lists are than B.A., which I personally see as having been far more accurate in recent years.
I would like to see a spreadsheet detailing each lists’ accuracy over the past 10 years.
I imagine your feelings are more informal, and as such, more biased than a statistical analysis would be.
How would you determine “accuracy”. In other words, what do you consider to be “success” for a prospect on one of these lists? Making it TO the majors. Playing a certain number of games in MLB? An All Star appearance? Would be an interesting study.
I’ve actually decided to do this. I’m in the process of making a spreadsheet using Law’s, BA’s and Goldstein’s top 100 lists from the past 5 years.
Will compare their rankings to the rankings of the players by WAR. Should be interesting to see who comes out on top. Will post to my blog and submit to weekly blog post on here when I finish.
Awesome!
Just finished. Shoot me an e-mail at warehouseworthy@gmail.com and I’ll send you the link.
Is “different” “bad” though? Law was by far the first one to tab Xander Bogaerts as a real prospect (just as a single example), and now he’s in most people’s top 50s and people are saying he has the potential to be in the teens, or better, a year from now. But a year ago Law was the only one of the major prospect guys talking about him.
I never mentioned accuracy though, because it’s so incredibly hard to do what these guys do. We’re talking about 18 year old kids who are years and years away from possibly playing, and whom may have plenty of outside factors influencing their development that these analysts aren’t aware of.
I don’t just use Klaw’s list and base all of my opinions on that, I like that he values upside over probability in most cases, but I read Goldstein’s and BA’s and Sickels and use all of them. Seems like the best strategy is find players they all agree on, or close to it, and go from there.
I understand being off of the rest of the guys but delgado barely inside the top 100 and julio at 18th when almost everybody has him in the top 5
Where did Law rank the Tiger prospects? Then I’ll tell you how smart or dumb he is 🙂
Turner 29 and Castellanos 37 that is it. Granted every team tends to overrate their own guys.
That seems low for Turner and high for Castellanos.
I know nothing of the Det system. I am a Braves fan and his ranking of their prospects is was off of others. He gives a lot of love to Vizciano and maybe some to Simmons but gave a lot of hate to Teheran and Delgado.
What? And no Cale Iorge! Outrageous!
teheran 18th & delgado 98th? what did the braves do to keith
He is high on Vizcaino (as a starter)
too bad atlanta is sticking him in the bullpen for the long haul or atleast what it seems like. you think he would get alot better value on the trade market while he is a starter but he is part of the big 4 and frank wont budge
To me it seems short term they are thinking of him as a RP but after that who knows they have not ruled out him becoming a starter
yeah your right but if there is no chance of him being a starter I think they could get more now than when he is in the pen. the 7,8 &9 innings are spoken for and medlen is there this year to give breathers to eric johnny craig. so arodys is expendable and plenty of teams would line up for him
True but a lot of the reason JV, EOF, and CK burned out was cause the pitched a ton. A guy like Aroyds has the stuff to pitch in those late innings as well and give one of those a breather. They may also be getting Moylan back to form too.
thats were I hope kris comes into play. I like prado but he is not a left fielder. he is best at super utility. besides playing 40 games for chipper and getting starts around the diamond could still be productive.they have tons of pitching so go get a left fielder. I know the saying about never having enough pitching but with the nl east getting stronger there is room for the braves to improve too
I actually thought Prado played a very good LF last year. He has a decent arm not fantastic but he does not need that good of one being in LF. He took good routes and did the proper play. I do not know where people say he is not a LF. Is he going to give you 25 HRs? No but he can produce enough to get you by.
the braves need more than getting by from a position of power. if he plays everyday and hits .300 then great. but we all know chipper will man the hot corner at most 120 games so then prado is needed at 3rd. im sure he will have to fill in for others also. when that happens you have to let hinske or diaz play left. in the east thats not a good thing. if you had an every day left fielder then that doesnt happen. sound crazy maybe. but after last year something has to change. or we can all hope every if that we have pans out
Keep in mind though Prado’s production is more similar to that of a 2B. What does Uggla’s bat profile more as? I would say a corner OF. Maybe I am just crazy but to me you are just taking one guy with a not as strong bat in a strong bat position and making up for it with a strong bat in a not so strong spot.
I understand that too and im sure thats atlanta’s thinking also. but when u can produce uggla type numbers at second that shouldnt be a pass to accept lower numbers elsewhere. but if prado shows back up and hits .300 like I said above then great cause tgen uggla will actually hit bombs with somebody on base. I would have to believe he lead the league in solo shots. but that still hasnt fixed the problem when they uproot prado to fill in for somebody then they play 40 plus games with the hinske/diaz platoon or what ever guy happens to be. I am probably over reacting but when the second and third place teams get better and the braves stand pat well besides pastornicky there is reason to want to improve.
Its not just about his average though. If he can just continue to get on base then thats fine. That is what hurt the team last year. They actually managed to hit 40 more HRs last year over the year before but still scored about 100 less runs. Also sometimes you have to accept less in one area if you have more from another if you have limited resources which almost all team in MLB dont (except the Yankees)
is there a site that would show most solo homeruns? after reading that about the 100 fewer runs 40 more homers really has me wanting to know if uggla actually did lead the league in that
I just use the MLB sites team stats. For the number of solo HR you can just go to a player page on ESPN see their splits with no one on. Uggla had 23 solo HRs last year. 16 of those were leading off the inning
Keep in mind though Prado’s production is more similar to that of a 2B. What does Uggla’s bat profile more as? I would say a corner OF. Maybe I am just crazy but to me you are just taking one guy with a not as strong bat in a strong bat position and making up for it with a strong bat in a not so strong spot.
There is a chance of him being a starter. From what I’ve read, it’s taking Vizcaino longer to develop secondary pitches to add to his outstanding 2 pitches, while working on control. With all the young, inexperienced arms in the rotation, Vizcaino could make his case for being a starter by excelling this spring. If he does start in the ‘pen, I’d think ATL would heavily consider putting him in the rotation, as a fill-in, if not considering Kris Medlen, if someone in the rotation (Jurrjens) goes down.
When you have as many young arms as we do, 1-2 might not pan out, so Vizcaino certainly has an opportunity to go from the ‘pen to the rotation much like Feliz (a former Brave) has done in TEX.
The Braves seem to think that Vizcaino is 3rd behind Delgado and Teheran for a rotation spot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s starting next season, but it’s just not in the cards this year with Hudson, Jurrjens, Hanson, and Beachy healthy.
And Vizcaino 14th!!!! Man, they must have been mean to him on twitter.
haha you may be right. im glad he thinks highly of arodys but still julio and randall got no love. yeah they are in the top 100 but julio is a top 5 prospect and delgado is in the top 50 most places
Julio does has a few issues that make me (and others) question his potential. He could come out and pitch like Pineda, or he could end up as just another hard throwing closer. Julio could be great, but he’s not a sure thing like many make him out to be.
haha you may be right. im glad he thinks highly of arodys but still julio and randall got no love. yeah they are in the top 100 but julio is a top 5 prospect and delgado is in the top 50 most places
I predict the Nationals have three by the end of the year on most people’s Top 100(Rendon, Meyer, and Purke)
Rendon and Meyer I could see. Purke has been dreadful since the middle of last year. It would take a huge turnaround from him.
I like seeing Padres Alonso waay ahead of Cubs Rizzo on the Baseball america top 100. If he doesn’t shorten his gigantic swing he will start to fall on these lists.
yea he plummeted from 75 to 47
Thanks dude, watch him go back to the 75 spot
Couple of things…
a) Big appreciator of sarcasm here but would’ve appreciated more baseball intellect regarding the prospects other than “There’s absolutely no link between his last name and Darvish’s Iranian heritage”.
b) Good to see 6 current/former Yankee prospects on the list.
c) Glad they feel our GCl/Rookie league teams are loaded with position player talent. I agree.
d) The Josh Bell comment was funny.