Comparing the MLB Top-100 Prospects Lists

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How do the many different MLB top 100 prospects lists compare to each other?

It’s prospect season! Over the last month, six different top 100 MLB prospects lists have come out, so now is a good time to compare the lists. Actually, some of these lists have more than 100 players, but for this analysis, I’ve only included the top 100 players on each. The six top prospects lists included are:

Baseball America

Baseball Prospectus

Call to the Pen

John Sickels

Keith Law (Insider subscription required)

MLB.com

First, some big picture data:

With 76 players appearing on five of the six lists, it’s clear that there is plenty of agreement on who the top 100 prospects in baseball are, but there is also room for disagreement. Both Call to the Pen and Keith Law had eight players who only appeared on their top 100, while MLB.com had just two such players. As you’d expect, these “one list only” players are generally near the bottom of the prospect list they appear on, with many of them ranked in the 80s or 90s. Not all of them are ranked in the 80s and 90s, though. There were five players who were ranked in the top 60 on one list and did not appear on any other lists. These players were:

Those are the outliers—players who rank fairly high (top 60) on one list but do not appear on any other. Four of the five are very young, making them more difficult to project going forward. It’s just very hard to know what a 17-year-old baseball player will be three or four years down the road. It will be interesting to see how another year of playing time will affect the rankings of the four young players listed above.

What about the top dogs, the blue-chippers, the cream of the crop? What kind of differences do we see among the prospect lists for the highest-ranking players? Let’s take a look at the top 20. I took the average ranking for each player among all sources and ranked the entire list.

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The Top 20

There isn’t much disagreement at the very, very top. Andrew Benintendi is the #1 prospect on four of the six lists. Call to the Pen has Yoan Moncada ahead of Benintendi and Baseball Prospectus put SP Alex Reyes at the very top of their list, which is a shame with the recent news that he’ll miss this year with Tommy John surgery. Baseball Prospectus also has Dansby Swanson ahead of Benintendi. Hopefully, he won’t suffer the same fate as Reyes.

Speaking of Reyes, Keith Law is the low man on Reyes, putting him 10th. Law even has another pitcher higher on his list than Reyes—Michael Kopech, who was traded with Yoan Moncada by the Red Sox to the White Sox in the Chris Sale trade. Law has Kopech 7th on his list. Law is also lower on Yoan Moncada than the others, putting him 17th. No other list had him lower than 5th.

Cody Bellinger jumps off the page when looking at these lists. He’s ranked 6th by Keith Law and 7th by Baseball America, but 21st by Call to the Pen and 26th by Baseball Prospectus. Bellinger has hit for great power over the last two years. As a 19-year-old in 2015, he hit 30 home runs at Rancho Cucamonga in the California League (Advanced A ball). According to this article at MiLB.com, the California League has a very eclectic mix of ballparks when it comes to park effects.

Over the three-year period from 2014-2016, High Desert, Lancaster, Stockton and Bakersfield were very good parks for home runs, while Modesto, Lake Elsinore and Inland Empire were difficult home run parks. Bellinger’s home park in Rancho Cucamonga had a three-year park home run park factor of .856, meaning home runs were suppressed in his home park. Not surprisingly, Bellingher hit just eight of his 30 home runs at home in 2015.

Bellinger spent most of the 2016 season playing for Tulsa in the Double-A Texas League. The Tulsa home ballpark had a slightly favorable home run park factor of 1.166, but Bellinger hit 15 of his 26 home runs on the road. Overall, Bellinger has played four seasons in the minor league and has hit .267/.349/.494.

Another highly ranked player with some divergent rankings is Phillies shortstop prospect J.P. Crawford. He’s considered a top seven prospect by three sources (Baseball Prospectus #4, Keith Law #5, MLB.com #7) while being ranked 27th by John Sickels and 35th by Call to the Pen.

Crawford is close to the major leagues. He played in 87 games at Triple-A Lehigh Valley last year but struggled with the bat, hitting .244/.328/.318. It’s important to remember that he was just 21 years old in Triple-A last year. Most 21-year-olds are playing in High-A. Crawford is still high on most lists because of his athleticism, his defense, and his ability to control the strike zone. His future is likely more near the bottom of the lineup than the top if he doesn’t show more with the bat.

Michael Kopech was mentioned above. He throws hot fire. Keith Law has him 7th, while Baseball America has him 32nd and Baseball Prospectus has him 36th. In a drill in the offseason in which players take a running start and have their throw clocked, Kopech hit 110 mph. Of course, unless your name is Carter Capps, you can’t take a running start (or two hops) when you pitch.

The final guy in this group of top 20 players is Nick Senzel, a third base prospect for the Reds. Baseball America is very high on Senzel, ranking him 9th. He also has three rankings in the 20s. The low man on Senzel is Call to the Pen’s Benjamin Chase, who has him ranked 50th. Senzel was just drafted by the Reds with the second overall pick last June. He hit .305/.398/.514 in 68 games in his first professional season after being a top all-around bat coming out of college. Chase likes Senzel to be a solid big league regular but maybe not an elite-level superstar.

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The Next 20 (21-40)

Dodgers pitching prospect Yadier Alvarez has seen his stock rise after his first year of professional ball in 2016. He was already considered a hot commodity even before getting action in a game. Alvarez was given the second-highest signing bonus ever by the Dodgers as part of the 2015/2016 international free agent class. He pitched at two levels last year and had a 2.12 ERA and 1.03 WHIP. He also struck out 81 batters in 59 1/3 innings.

Among the six sources, Alvarez has a high ranking of #8 by Call to the Pen and a low of #49 by MLB.com. He’s also ranked in the 20s by two sources and the 40s by two sources. Call to the Pen said this about him: “Alvarez topped triple digits multiple times on the year and sits with an easy mid-90s fastball on the mound that he pairs with a slider that he can use with two grips to get different looks to hitters.” He will move up to the higher levels this year and could be in Los Angeles in a couple years.

Two prospects—Reynaldo Lopez and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.—were ranked in the top 50 by five of the six sources and unranked by one. Lopez is a right-handed pitcher who was traded in the off-season from the Nationals to the White Sox as part of the Adam Eaton deal. He pitched 44 innings for the Nationals last year and had a 4.91 ERA and 1.57 WHIP. He is ranked 10th by Call to the Pen, then ranked in the 30s by three sources and 46th by MLB.com. Keith Law did not include him in his top 100, perhaps because of his major league service time.

Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. is the son of the great Vladimir Guerrero, who came very close to making the Hall of Fame this year. Vlad junior has just one Rookie League season under his belt. As a 17-year-old, he hit .271/.359/.449 for the Bluefield Blue Jays. Unlike his father, the younger Vlad knows how to take a walk. He had a healthy 12 percent walk rate, which nearly equaled his strikeout rate. He was ranked as high as 11th and as low as 48th among the five sources who ranked him, but Baseball Prospectus did not have him on their top 100.

Another player in the 21-40 range who had a big difference in ranking is right-handed pitcher Jose De Leon, who was recently traded by the Dodgers to the Rays. De Leon already has 17 innings in the big leagues. He started four games for the Dodgers last season (6.35 ERA, 15 strikeouts in 17 innings).

De Leon is ranked 8th by John Sickels. Four of the five other sources have him ranked between 23rd and 38th. Then there’s Keith Law, who has De Leon at #73 on his top 100 list. Law had this to say about De Leon in his write-up: “I think he’s a solid fourth starter, maybe right now, but he won’t match his minor league numbers unless one or more of his weapons becomes a true out pitch.”

Tyler O’Neill is an outfielder in the Mariners organization. He’s ranked between 30th and 53rd by five of the six sources, but is not in the top 100 on the Keith Law Top 100. O’Neill was a 3rd round pick in the 2013 June draft. He had a big 32-homer season playing in High-A in 2015 and followed that up with a 24 homer, 102 RBI season last year in Double-A. One issue with O’Neill is that he’s struck out close to 29 percent of the time in his four years in the minor leagues.

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The Next 20 (41-60)

Prior to the 2016 season, Cleveland outfield prospect Bradley Zimmer was ranked between 23rd and 31st by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, and Baseball America. This year, his best ranking is 22nd by MLB.com, but he’s dropped to 80th on the Baseball Prospectus list and 62nd on the Baseball America list. Keith Law did not have him in his top 100.

Zimmer split last season between Double-A and Triple-A. He hit .253/.371/.471 with the Akron RubberDucks in Double-A, but struggled to hit for power with Columbus in Triple-A, hitting .242/.349/.305. He also struck out 37 percent of the time in Triple-A.

Left-handed pitching prospect Josh Hader of the Brewers is ranked as high as 19th by Baseball Prospectus and as low as 80th by Call to the Pen (and 71st by Keith Law). Hader’s 2016 season was very good in many ways. He had a 0.95 ERA in 57 innings in Double-A, with 73 strikeouts. He was then moved up to Colorado Springs and had a 5.22 ERA in 69 innings, but still struck out 88 batters. His control went south as he moved west. He walked 19 batters in 57 innings with Biloxi in Double-A, then walked 36 in 69 innings in Colorado Springs.

Overall, Hader’s 161 strikeouts in 126 innings shows the high ceiling he has. Call to the Pen’s Ben Chase likened him to Mitch Williams in appearance, the wild-haired reliever most famous for his time with the Phillies in the 1990s. Keith Law still questions whether he can be a big league starter because he doesn’t have the three-pitch repertoire most starting pitchers have. He could end up in the bullpen.

Another very young player, Rangers outfield prospect Leodys Taveras held his own as a 17-year-old in rookie ball last year (.278/.329/.382 in 155 PA), then struggled in an aggressive promotion to Low-A (.228/.271/.293 in 133 PA). He places highest on the Call to the Pen list, sitting at #27. Keith Law has him 35th. On the other end of the spectrum, Baseball Prospectus places him 73rd on their list, while John Sickels doesn’t have him in his top 100.

Seattle Mariners outfield prospect Kyle Lewis was the 11th overall pick in last year’s June draft. He was sent to the Everett Aquasox in the Northwest League (Low-A) and hit .299/.385/.530 through his first 30 games. Then his season was cut short with a nasty knee injury. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament as well as the medial and lateral meniscus in his right knee when he collided with Tri-City catcher Chris Mattison after rounding third base as Mattison was coming up the line.

With the injury clouding his future, Lewis was ranked 29th by MLB.com and 34th by Baseball America, but also 70th by Baseball Prospectus and 84th by Call to the Pen. If he comes back healthy, he has the talent to be a consensus top 25 guy by the end of the year.

Another player with injury issues is right-handed pitching prospect James Kaprielian of the New York Yankees. He was the 16th overall pick in the 2015 draft but missed almost all of last season while recovering from a flexor tendon injury in April. He got back on the field in the fall and hit 95-97 mph on the radar gun, which is where he was before the injury.

Kaprielian is ranked 28th by Keith Law, which is the most optimistic of the six sources. He’s ranked between 46th and 62nd by four of the sources. Baseball America has him 87th. Their write-up noted Kaprielian’s delivery: “Evaluators note that his delivery, featuring a plunging arm action, is high-stress and could contribute to further injury issues.”

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Beyond the Top 60

There were a few other players of note who landed beyond the top 60 and had a wide disparity in rank among the sources. Rockies right-handed pitching prospect Jeff Hoffman was ranked between 36th and 50th by four sources, but also 78th by Call to the Pen and 96th by Keith Law. Hoffman has been rising on a few top prospect lists over the last three years. He got to the major leagues for 31 1/3 innings in 2016 and was knocked around a bit for a 4.88 ERA (with a 6.27 FIP). He struck out 22 and walked 17, which is not good, and gave up seven home runs, which is awful.

Law, who had the worst ranking for Hoffman at 96th, still believes he’s a great prospect but in the wrong organization: “But his delivery lacks deception and the pitch is true, so when he got to the majors hitters squared it up, putting it in play three times as often as they swung and missed at it. In many environments, that might be OK, but Coors Field punishes balls put in play, so Hoffman might need to pitch somewhat backward.”

Catcher Jorge Alfaro of the Phillies has been on the Baseball Prospectus list since before the 2012 season. His ranking has gone from 101st to 76th to 41st to 31st to 70th to this year’s 33rd. They like Alfaro the most of the six sources. Two others have Alfaro in the 40s and three sources have him 72nd and worse. Call to the Pen (83rd) and John Sickels (84th) are the least optimistic on the young catcher.

Atlanta Braves shortstop prospect Kevin Maitan was signed last summer by the Braves at the age of 16. At the time, Baseball America considered him the “best international prospects for July 2 since Miguel Sano” in 2009. If he can stay at shortstop, he would likely be an even better prospect than Sano.

Still, he’s a long way from the big leagues, which is why there is a diverse placement for him on the top 100 lists. MLB.com has him ranked 32nd and Call to the Pen has him 48th. On the other hand, John Sickels snuck him just into his top 100 with a 99th placement and Baseball Prospectus put him at 100th.

One last player in this group is San Diego Padres pitcher Cal Quantrill. His top ranking is 23rd by Keith Law. He also fit into the top 50 of Baseball Prospectus, at 45th. Three others have him in the 90s and Call to the Pen did not have him in their top 100.

Quantrill only has a half-season of professional playing time after being drafted with the 8th overall pick last June. He pitched at three levels in 2016 and had a 5.11 ERA in 37 innings, but struck out 46 and walked just 8, so the talent shined through despite the high ERA.

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We Have Agreement

Three of the top prospects in baseball—Andrew Benintendi, Dansby Swanson, and Amed Rosario—are similarly ranked across all six sources. Benintendi is the #1 prospect in baseball according to four sources, and placed #2 and #3 on the other top prospect lists. Swanson is ranked either 2nd, 3rd, or 4th on all six lists. Rosario has a high ranking of 3rd and a low ranking of 9th. These three players don’t have the disparity in ranking that some other prospects have.

Further down the list, Red Sox third base prospect Rafael Devers is ranked between 9th and 18th by all six sources. He’s been zooming up prospects lists since before the 2015 season when he was ranked in the 90s by Baseball America, MLB.com, and Baseball Prospectus.