January 28, 201511 yr Buxton at #5, Sano at #13. Four Cubs in the top 12. http://www.scoutingbook.com/prospects/
January 28, 201511 yr Anybody figure out how to filter this by team instead of scrolling through? I did notice Jason Adam at #242 (trending up). This is my shocked face .
January 28, 201511 yr Author In the top 50, we have Buxton at #5, Sano at #13, Gordon at #39, Berrios at #40, Meyer at #44 and Stewart at #48. So six of the top 50. After that we're looking at #96, Rosario, as our next one.
January 28, 201511 yr In the top 50, we have Buxton at #5, Sano at #13, Gordon at #39, Berrios at #40, Meyer at #44 and Stewart at #48. So six of the top 50. After that we're looking at #96, Rosario, as our next one. I like this ranking! I figure there'd be 6 in the top 50 or close to it!
January 28, 201511 yr Stephen Pryor listed at 147. Kennys Vargas listed at 166. Both of these guys are no longer "rookies" and haven't been on my list. They're still here though. Also, JR Graham at 144 still listed with the Braves.
January 28, 201511 yr I have a hard time with rankings that don't follow the universal rules for what makes a prospect a prospect.
January 28, 201511 yr This list is crazy.... other than the Top 100... Byron Buxton 5Miguel Sano 13Nick Gordon 39JO Berrios 40Alex Meyer 44Kohl Stewart 48Eddie Rosario 96Nick Burdi 139JR Graham 144Stephen Pryor 147Kennys Vargas 166Trevor May 199Jason Adam at 242Lewis Thorpe - 252Jorge Polanco - 284Joe Benson - 323Mason Melotakis - 390Danny Santana - 401Luke Bard 423Brandon Poulson 508Yohan Pino 520Adam Walker 521Max Kepler 529Travis Harrison 541Levi Michael 564JT Chargois 599Stuart Turner 601Zach Jones 631Ryan Eades 648Niko Goodrum 680Stephen Gonsalves 715Aaron Slegers 727Michael Tonkin 749 I know I might be a little higher than most on Taylor Rogers, but he should be in the top 300. Yohan Pino ahead of Walker and Kepler. Joe Benson hasn't been with the Twins in forever. Danny Santana at 401?!
January 28, 201511 yr Could someone direct me to the definitive universal rules for what makes a prospect a prospect? Edited January 28, 201511 yr by h2oface
January 28, 201511 yr Author Could someone direct me to the definitive universal rules for what makes a prospect a prospect?I've seen prospect listing use different rules. Some won't touch anyone who has had any time in the majors, some won't touch anyone who has exceeded rookie status, some consider young players with less than a year still a prospect. Lots of different ways I've seen.
January 28, 201511 yr Joe Benson...hmmm.I was just going to mention that. I'm assuming that this is the same Joe Benson that the Twins lost to Texas, played in the Miami system last year and according to his Wikipedia page signed a deal with the Atlanta Braves on January 10th, 2015. Hmmm, indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Benson Edited January 28, 201511 yr by James
January 28, 201511 yr Author I rarely care about a prospect listing past the top 100, so while there certainly are some weird rankings for the Twins (and likely other teams) WAY past 100, I don't think it takes away from the overall view of the main prospects. But I mean, one can certainly discard it as hocom. Most of them end up being hocom anyway.
January 28, 201511 yr If you don't count Vargas and Santana and Benson and add Graham on this list, you have 30 of the 750 prospects from this publication. I think this list is crazy as well, in terms of who and where they have prospects listed. It's obvious they don't truly try to evaluate beyond the top 100. We have 4% of the prospects on this list. Not sure if that is good or bad considering the number of teams in the league? Evaluating per 100. 7% of the Top 100 5% of the Top 2004% of the Top 3003% of the Top 4003% of the Top 5004% of the Top 6004% of the Top 7004% of the Top 750SCOUTINGBOOK.COMThey make this hard to respect. You can tell they have not put in the work to anayze their list. Players on the wrong team. Players who are not eligible for rookie of the year honors because they already played enough games at the MLB level in 2014. Makes you appreciate Jeremy, Seth and the boys that much more for their in depth research.
January 28, 201511 yr If you don't count Vargas and Santana and Benson and add Graham on this list, you have 30 of the 750 prospects from this publication. I think this list is crazy as well, in terms of who and where they have prospects listed. It's obvious they don't truly try to evaluate beyond the top 100. We have 4% of the prospects on this list. Not sure if that is good or bad considering the number of teams in the league? Evaluating per 100. 7% of the Top 100 5% of the Top 2004% of the Top 3003% of the Top 4003% of the Top 5004% of the Top 6004% of the Top 7004% of the Top 750SCOUTINGBOOK.COMThey make this hard to respect. You can tell they have not put in the work to anayze their list. Players on the wrong team. Players who are not eligible for rookie of the year honors because they already played enough games at the MLB level in 2014. Makes you appreciate Jeremy, Seth and the boys that much more for their in depth research.I agree that a list this big makes it clear that they don't do their homework for every prospect on the list. They also have Yohan Pino listed for the Twins at 520. If you look at the description they have for him, it just says "undefined". You're right about another thing; this makes a person realize how great TD is as a resource. Edited January 28, 201511 yr by James
January 28, 201511 yr Can't wait for the team to transition Sano back to SS also. Looks like this list is made using the cut and paste tool. I applaud the initiative in rating this many players, but clearly, it overwhelmed them.
January 28, 201511 yr Could someone direct me to the definitive universal rules for what makes a prospect a prospect? There are no universal rules. Everyone has a different opinion, that's what makes ranking fun.
January 28, 201511 yr Author There are no universal rules. Everyone has a different opinion, that's what makes ranking fun.they are certainly supposed to be fun.
January 28, 201511 yr This list is crazy.... other than the Top 100... Byron Buxton 5Miguel Sano 13Nick Gordon 39JO Berrios 40Alex Meyer 44Kohl Stewart 48Eddie Rosario 96Nick Burdi 139JR Graham 144Stephen Pryor 147Kennys Vargas 166Trevor May 199Jason Adam at 242Lewis Thorpe - 252Jorge Polanco - 284Joe Benson - 323Mason Melotakis - 390Danny Santana - 401Luke Bard 423Brandon Poulson 508Yohan Pino 520Adam Walker 521Max Kepler 529Travis Harrison 541Levi Michael 564JT Chargois 599Stuart Turner 601Zach Jones 631Ryan Eades 648Niko Goodrum 680Stephen Gonsalves 715Aaron Slegers 727Michael Tonkin 749 I know I might be a little higher than most on Taylor Rogers, but he should be in the top 300. Yohan Pino ahead of Walker and Kepler. Joe Benson hasn't been with the Twins in forever. Danny Santana at 401?! There's quite a bit of issues with their ordering in my opinion. Polanco, Thorpe, May, Santana, and Walker are all way too low given the upside and/or major league production. Garver isn't listed all and is certainly a better prospect than most of the guys on the bottom. He's got Burdi pretty high, but Zach Jones is near the bottom and they have similar profiles. Tyler Jones and Reed aren't even on the list, and they are also quite similar. I'm not a fan of high ranking relievers, but all four of these guys look to be back of the pen shut down options.
January 29, 201511 yr They have a (not so small) disclaimer here Excerpt: ScoutingBook.com is the backyard toolshed of a handful of swell fellas (and one sassy lady) who live, work or breathe baseball, online gaming, or both. We use Scouting Book as our own touchstone to collect and share our opinions, rankings, and ideas about baseball prospecting in a connected world. We're also sharing these opinions and rankings here for those who may be interested.We're not ESPN, with a billion dollar budget, hairdressers and a shiny, shiny studio. We're not even John Sickels (though at least one of us would like to have his baby.) We're just a group of baseball-minded folks who needed a place to pool our resources and record our thoughts on prospects while we experiment with some online collaboration ideas. The site has grown a little from there. The Scouting Book website is a series of generated reports from a whole mess of online and offline systems. Scouting Book's prospect 'rankings', our biggest feature, are actually a Combined Ranking: a calculated summary of player valuations based on inputs from across the entire baseball-prospecting world. Our depth charts of current and future closers (our 'Closer Watch' feature) is produced in a similar way. Important: We do not 'choose' where (or whether) to 'place' prospects in the ranked list. Prospects appear where the formula places them each time the calculation is run (usually nightly). A prospect who is highly-ranked on other significant lists (BA, ESPN, etc) will automatically appear in a calculated position on our site, assuming we have their core data in our offline database of 2,000+ prospects. We don't reject old-school scouting reports, and we don't discount modern sabermetric statistics, either: we bow out of that entire argument and use our system to try to deliver values that come from both the head and the gut at the same time. Pretty cool stuff, but you have to take it in context, and the context is up there...
January 29, 201511 yr Author Thrylos, yes, I probably should have pointed that out earlier. Should have learned that lesson when talking about ZIPS projections and people being so leery of the projections because of projected plate appearances for certain players even though the disclaimer clearly says they aren't actually saying they'll have that many PA. :-) Edited January 29, 201511 yr by jimmer
January 29, 201511 yr Yeah, it's fun to read all the various lists, and then people can determine if it gives them any value. As for who I include in "Prospect" lists... I go by whether or not he has retained his rookie status in MLB. MIchael Tonkin, Stephen Pryor, kennys vargas and danny santana are no longer rookies starting in 2015, so they would not be included in my rankings. I believe Thrylos removes guys as soon as they hit the big leagues, maybe?Baseball America goes by the
January 29, 201511 yr There are no universal rules. Everyone has a different opinion, that's what makes ranking fun. Exactly. That was my veiled point. There are no universal rules that I know of. Edited January 29, 201511 yr by h2oface
January 29, 201511 yr ScoutingBook.com is the backyard toolshed of a handful of swell fellas (and one sassy lady) who live, work or breathe baseball, online gaming, or both. That explains the Stephen Pryor ranking. I heard he's a level 30 warlock equiped with both an invisibility spell and multi-attack ability.
January 29, 201511 yr Could someone direct me to the definitive universal rules for what makes a prospect a prospect?While there are some rather arbitrary lines drawn by some, it's pretty much accepted that if a player has lost rookie status and is on the MLB roster, he is no longer a prospect... He's an MLB player at that point. Weird list is weird.
January 29, 201511 yr It's an interesting list, some of the inputs to their rankings are clearly outdated (Joe Benson), but then they have Poulson at 508, so they must have some sort of report about his fastball. I'm not really sure what to make of it, maybe they catch some info about prospects that others don't, maybe it's completely meaningless.
January 29, 201511 yr I think there are some problems with it, probably due to its full automation. Taijuan Walker at #6 has 53 MLB IP already. Baez at #10 had 229 MLB PA last year. Which is a shame, because the concept sounds good to me (prospect rank/grade aggregator).
January 29, 201511 yr From their site: We consider any MLB rookie-eligible player a 'prospect' no matter how old, and players are graduated the year after they no longer qualify as MLB Rookies, though their biographical information page remains available for historical interest. Doesn't sound like this has been fully updated for 2015 then, contrary to what it says on the list. (In addition to the problem of tracking and removing past prospects who never reached rookie status, like Benson.) It would be interesting to see how many total prospects are even rank-able.
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