An uber top 100 (and then some)

So, the prospect ranking season has come and gone. Obviously, it continues all year as prospects on various rankings either live up to, exceed or fail to meet expectations. Over on our Prospect Watch, we will update lists especially as players “graduate” off of them (when they get past rookie status levels).

By now, though, most, if not all, of the big prospect watchers have put out their lists. It’s always fun to compare and contrast the lists — it’s why we do them in the first place, right? It leads to more conversations and debate.

It seems like there is general agreement on a “Big 4″ and I’m honored that people put me on this Prospect Mount Rushmore. The others, in no particular order, are the fine folks at Baseball America, Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN’s Keith Law. You’ll need a subscription to read some of the stuff, but if you’re a junkie, it’s worth it.

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that there aren’t many, many other prospect rankings to digest out there. There’s Project Prospect and John Sickels’ MinorLeagueBall (list coming out today, it seems), just to name a couple more. Seriously, a search for rankings would keep you busy for a long, long time.

For now, though, lets stick to the first four mentioned. What would a combined list of all four of our rankings’ look like? Would it be the most thorough list ever? I started compiling in a spreadsheet a while ago, thinking I’d post this. Before I got around to it, BaseballbyTom beat me to it with a combined Top 50 list, something he called the Frankenlist.

I’m going to go a little further. It’s a simple process really. Average out the placement on all four of our lists and rank according to that average. For simplicity, anyone who didn’t appear on one of our lists got a 101 ranking. I’m not breaking ties, just running the ranking as is (Matt Moore and Bryce Harper have the same average, for example. Moore has two No. 1 rankings, Harper has one. But Moore has one No. 3 ranking and Harper was ranked No. 2 by the other three who didn’t put him first… you decide who’s No. 1 there). In total by count, 138 players made at least one Top 100. While Yu Darvish and Yoenis Cespedes only made it into one list, I included them (BA’s rankings with 101s from the rest of us). Here’s all 138 with their average score: