Baseball Prospectus’ Top 101 Prospects

Each year there seems to be more and more sites that publish their own top prospect rankings. But, generally speaking, there are three that I’ve come to rely upon the most – Baseball America, ESPN’s Keith Law, and Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein. The three lists often have some fairly noticeable differences as each of the outlets use some different factors in coming up with their final determinations but that variation can prove to be a good thing at times. Law has already released his Top 100 list, as Andrew examined late last week and we should be seeing BA’s by month’s end. Goldstein’s list of the Top 101 prospects became available earlier this week, so let’s take a quick look.

As we’ve seen on most of these top prospect lists, the top three spots are made up of some combination of Matt Moore, Mike Trout, and Bryce Harper. Goldstein has Harper at #2 on his list. This seems to be a common ranking for him, though many of the other sites have flip-flopped Moore and Trout as the #1 and #3 options around him.

Anthony Rendon checks in at #26 on Goldstein’s rankings. He seems to appear in the first quarter of many of these lists, with some of the variation being based mostly on whether he joins Washington mid-season or in September.

At #91 Matt Purke makes an appearance. The same injury concerns that caused him to slip to the 3rd Round of the 2011 Draft have kept him off of many of these other top prospect lists, including a failure to appear on the lists from MLB.com and ESPN.com.

A.J. Cole (#60), Brad Peacock (#64), and Derek Norris (#96) also made Goldstein’s rankings. All three were dealt to Oakland in the Gio Gonzalez trade, of course, but it’s worth noting how strong the organization’s minor league system really was prior to the deal.