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MLB prospects rankings

roger_that Aug 07 2022 11:56 AM

I was looking up the Mets' top prospects this morning, and I wondered if anyone knows where the top 10 or top 40 rankings are for the past few years. Better yet, does anyone know if these things are tracked? I would imagine so, because it would be very useful to understand approximately what you're trading away in trading a prospect. To be more precise than I think I need to be for this astute crowd, I'm thinking if, of the top 20 prospects of 2015, only 10 ever made the major leagues, and only 5 are stars (mixed at random, just to keep things simple), then you could see that in trading a top 20 prospect, you're losing half of a major leaguer and a quarter of a star. Simplistic, but so basic I'm thinking someone somewhere has tracked this sort of thing pretty precisely. Am I correct? If I'm wrong, are there tools for us to try it?

MFS62 Aug 07 2022 04:34 PM Re: MLB prospects rankings

It depends on which top 20 Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, SI and MLB all have top 20 type lists, sometimes updated at least once during the season. Baseball Digest used to do a rookie report annual issue. Those, and the Baseball America list are top 20 for each team. I'm not sure if you're wondering about a top 20 overall. If so, maybe SI. Their websites may keep old versions. Have fun. Later

Frayed Knot Aug 07 2022 06:24 PM Re: MLB prospects rankings

One problem with numerical rankings is that it only tells you how relevant a prospect is relative to others in that organization at that moment. But a #1 guy in a weak system may not be all that good while a 5th or 6th guy in a different year might be much more promising.

roger_that Aug 07 2022 07:47 PM Re: MLB prospects rankings

Frayed Knot wrote: One problem with numerical rankings is that it only tells you how relevant a prospect is relative to others in that organization at that moment. But a #1 guy in a weak system may not be all that good while a 5th or 6th guy in a different year might be much more promising. Which is why I want to look at a lot of prospect lists from a lot of years and a lot of organizations. Seems to me that once you accumulate 1000 or so prospect/years, you can draw some general conclusions as to the actual value of your #1 prospect, your # 20 prospect and so on, and I'd be astonished if MLB teams didn't use such yardsticks in their considerations when faced with trading prospects for major leaguers and vice versa. I don't know, for example, if the average #1 prospect becomes a MLB star 10% of the time or 60% of the time. I don't know if your #10 prospect becomes a MLB regular 40% of the time or 75%. But such things are knowable. Not foolproof, of course. Not guaranteed. But knowable.

roger_that Aug 08 2022 08:50 AM Re: MLB prospects rankings

Anyone have a subscription to BaseballAmerica? They list their top 100 prospects going back years, and I'd like to see that list, but don't want to pay if I don't have to.

metsmarathon Aug 08 2022 09:12 AM Re: MLB prospects rankings

https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2022-in-season-prospect-list/summary?sort=-1,1 this goes only as far back as 2017, but is fairly comprehensive for that timeframe.

metsmarathon Aug 08 2022 09:14 AM Re: MLB prospects rankings

fun thing to notice... on the 2017 list, our polar bear was rated a 40 prospect, 12'th best in the system, a shade above guillorme, a shade below nimmo.

Benjamin Grimm Aug 08 2022 09:25 AM Re: MLB prospects rankings

And also below Gregory Guerrero, Desmond Lindsay, and Wuilmer Becerra. I'm glad we kept Pete instead of those guys. (Guerrero, however, is still in the Mets organization. He's played this year in the Florida Coast League, St. Lucie, and Brooklyn. Currently 23 years old. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=guerre000gre )

batmagadanleadoff Aug 08 2022 10:03 AM Re: MLB prospects rankings

=roger_that post_id=102875 time=1659923266 user_id=128] Seems to me that once you accumulate 1000 or so prospect/years, you can draw some general conclusions as to the actual value of your #1 prospect, your # 20 prospect and so on, and I'd be astonished if MLB teams didn't use such yardsticks in their considerations when faced with trading prospects for major leaguers and vice versa.

I doubt that MLB teams have any methodology whatsoever to evaluate the prospects of other teams. They probably just wing it and hope for the best. You probably thought of this first, the idea of tracking the successes and failures of past prospects and looking for patterns in their career arcs to help make judgments about future prospects. Revolutionary. Like the idea that a baserunner tagged while not in contact with a base should be called out. Astonishing, indeed. Me, I'd be astonished if MLB teams didn't also have libraries of film to evaluate prospects. I'd also be astonished if umpiring crews didn't try to get at least six or seven hours of sleep in between games (but not including doubleheaders, obviously). And I'd definitely be astonished if major leaguers went more than eight hours without eating anything.