This is way overdue. My goal was to get it a. within the few days of the season (that passed) and then b. before the amateur MLB draft that will bring in a new influx of talent to the Twins. So I am sticking with it. And
Seth Stohs already starting his mid-season rankings, really made me want to get this up before it is too obsolete. And before I post my post-draft rankings for 2012
I have not done prospect rankings for a couple of years now, mainly because I did not see the players play. Now that I have spent a good 15 hours or so watching Twins' prospects of all levels live in Spring Training, I feel confident to create a post-draft top prospects list (or 2 really; I like to separate pitchers from position players in these lists;) this had to come up first as a housekeeping item. Thus, I decided to do a consensus list. What is a
consensus list? A
consensus (or
aggregate or
composite) ranking is a ranking based on other rankings calculating averages. This is what this list is.
A bit about methodology: I combined 25 rankings of Twins top prospects. Some of them were top 10, some of them top 50. So I ended up with 71 names. The players were scored from 1 until the last position in the ranking (lets say 10 in a ten prospect list) and the ones who appeared in the master list but did not appear in the individual list were scored as one over the lowest ranking (i.e. prospects in the master list, but not in a top 10 list were scored as 11). The reason that this is required, is to not have artificially high rankings when results were averaged from players omitted in most lists but ranked high in one or 2. After all players in the master list were scored this way, their average scores were calculated and a new
consensus ranking was created. This is the consensus list I am presenting here.
What are the 25 sources? They are both national and local to the Twins' area, both professional and bloggers. And they are were weighted the same. My rationale in this is a. several Twins bloggers (Seth Stohs, for one) have a much more intimate view of the Twins' system than Baseball America. and b. Twins' bloggers care more and pay more attention to the Twins' system and get to watch more Twins' MiLB games than Keith Law, Johnathan Mayo or Kevin Goldstein. But the other guys have "professional" opinions. So here every opinion weighs the same. Here is a list of the 25 sources (alphabetically) :
Baseball America
Baseball Intellect
Jim Crikket (Knuckleballs)
Aaron Gleeman
Keith Law
Kevin Goldstein (Baseball Prospectus)
Fanatic Jack Steal
Fangraphs
Field of Twins
Gear up for Twins baseball
Jonathan Mayo
MLBDirt.com
MLB Prospect Portal
LaVelle Neal
Nick's Twins Blog
North Dakota Twins Fan
Jeff Reese- Bullpen Banter
John Seikels
On the road with Shawn
Puckett's Pond
Al Scorupa -Bullpen Banter
Seth Stohs
Travis Talks Twins
Top prospect alert
Twinkie Town - community ranking
This is what the master list looks in Excel:
And if you want to have a close look, original size is
here (and I did copy and paste a row -Lance Ray- twice; this would not fit in one screen)
There are 71 names in the list, but six of the players listed are no longer with the Twins for various reasons (alphabetically) : Matt Bashore, Philip Chapman, Tony Davis, Terry Doyle and Kane Holbrooks
Without further ado, here is the consensus rankings list of the top Twins' prospects this off-season (one can call it "post 2011 season" list :
1 Miguel Sano 3B
2 Eddie Rosario 2B/OF
3 Oswaldo Arcia OF
4 Aaron Hicks OF
5 Joe Benson OF
6 Liam Hendriks P
7 Kyle Gibson P
8 Levi Michael IF
9 Adrian Salcedo P
10 Brian Dozier IF
11 Chris Parmelee 1B/OF
12 Alex Wimmers P
13 Travis Harrison IF
14 Hudson Boyd P
15 Max Kepler OF
16 Madison Boer P
17 Angel Morales OF
18 Chris Herrmann C
19 Manuel Soliman P
20 Niko Goodrum IF
21 Tom Stuifbergen P
22 David Bromberg P
23 Garlos Gutierrez P
24 Nate Roberts IF/OF
25 BJ Hermsen P
26 Matt Hauser P
27 Matt Summers P
28 Pat Dean P
29 JaDamion Williams OF
30 Jairo Perez IF
31 Deolis Guerra P
32 Tyler Robertson P
33 Corey Williams P
34 Logan Darnell P
35 Scott Diamond P
36 Danny Rams C/OF
37 Jorge Polanco IF
38 Lance Ray OF
39 Danny Santana IF
40 Lester Oliveros P
41 Tyler Grimes IF
42 Jose Gonzales P
43 Danny Ortiz IF
44 Angel Mata P
45 Tim Shibuya P
46 James Beresford IF
47 Michael Gonzales 1B
48 Bruce Pugh P
49 Cole DeVries P
50 Michael Tonkin P
51 Dakota Watts P
52 Nelvin Fuentes P
53 Bobby Lanigan P
54 Rory Rhodes 1B/OF
55 Evan Bigley OF
56 Kennys Vargas 1B/OF
57 Andrew Albers P
58 Anthony Slama P
59 Anderson Hidalgo IF/OF
60 Ryan O' Rourke P
61 Hung-yi Chen P
62 Danny Lehmann C
63 Darin Mastroianni OF
64 Derek Rodriguez OF
65 Luis Nunez P
66 Kyle Waldrop P
Just thinking about the 2012 Twins' draft and how they might want to supplement the system, there are way too many OFs and not enough Ps in the top spots (and this is not about to change in the mid-season rankings) and there are not enough infielders in the whole system (other than the top 2 spots).
