Giolito is currently ranked #1 Nats prospect. Photo Eric Dearborn via win for teddy blog
For years I’ve collected links and lists of Nationals top 10 prospect lists into a text file, just growing it chronologically year after year. I noticed somewhat recently that in the Nats Big Board there are a few tabs with titles like “2013 Prospect Rankings” that had some but not all the rankings data that I’ve collected. Plus there’s no 2014 or 2015 tabs of this information.
So, I kind of became obsessed with translating all the information I had in text format to a spreadsheet. Today I’ve uploaded this spreadsheet for your viewing pleasure. I’ve created a “Link” along the right-hand side of this blog and also offer the below Google XLS:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ufpQabmX1XLTN9ShcgBDOLeOnfoIQLfXlk01qelJZbA/edit?usp=sharing
Some quick notes on the spreadsheet:
- I’ve only included what I deem to be “professional pundits” rankings. That is to say, I have not included my own, or the rankings of other Nats bloggers. I’ve also excluded auto-generated rankings (like at Scouting Book), rankings driven by projection systems (Zips, Pecota, etc), and rankings driven by or for Fantasy purposes.
- The default XLS in Google is sorted by the Fangraphs recent ranking, then alphabetically by last name after that.
- The color schemes on the spreadsheet: Orange means that the player hadn’t been acquired and/or drafted yet. Red means that player has either left the organization (by release, trade, etc) or has “graduated” and is no longer a candidate for these lists. Therefore a “white” or non-colored tab for recent lists should mean the player is still in our system, ranked or not. Corrections welcome.
- In the 2nd “pundits” tab you can see pundit by pundit whose lists i’ve used and (in yellow highlighting) see some of the lists I wouldn’t mind finding and including. In particular, if anyone has the BA handbooks from previous years, I’d love a scan of the Nats top 30 pages.
- One of the really interesting things I see in this data is the discrepant rankings from pundit to pundit by player; having all this data side by side lets you see (for example) that Keith Law really likes Joe Ross and John Sickels doesn’t rate Reynaldo Lopez nearly as highly as some of his counterparts.
- The data is pretty solid to 2010; if anyone has older links i’ll take them and include them. I also can carve off future time to do the google research but for now I’ve devoted enough time to this little project 🙂
There are some weird discrepancies in the data as far as I can tell:
- I have not done the “not yet signed” logic for all the IFA candidates, mostly because there’s some discrepancies in some of the IFA signing dates. To wit; Anderson Franco is listed on the big board as a 2014 IFA signing, but he appeared in BA Handbook’s 2014 rankings for the team. That BA Handbook is written mostly in December; how could Franco be ranked if he wasn’t even signed yet? Do all IFAs sign on the same July time-frame? Can a D.R. prospect sign the moment he turns 16, even if its outside the signing window?
- Players like Aaron Barrett and Taylor Jordan ended up on pundit ranking lists after exhausting their eligibility; that’s what numbers in red blocks means.
- mlb.com lists in particular are not published and set in stone; their system constantly adjusts the lists to account for player movement, so some of the older MLB list links may not match what’s in the xls.
The canonical history of Nats prospects ranked #1 on any list: Lucas Giolito, Brian Goodwin, Anthony Rendon, Bryce Harper (who never was NOT ranked #1 by any pundit), Stephen Strasburg (also never not ranked #1 in his brief stay on these lists in 2010), Jordan Zimmermann and lastly Chris Marrero, ranked #1 in the BA Nov 2007 ranking I somehow found.
Enjoy!