The consensus Red Sox top prospect tracker

We are now firmly in the offseason, which means we are getting into prospect season, a season that generally extends all the way through the winter, culminating in top 100 lists. So far, as of this writing, we have seen Red Sox-specific lists from both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus, as well as the always-available list from Sox Prospects. In terms of the lists we generally follow here at OTM, that means we are still waiting for MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs and Keith Law’s, which is now published at The Athletic.

As we’ve been doing for the last few years, we are going to be tracking these lists to form something of a consensus list. The way it works it pretty simple and certainly not mathematically rigorous, so don’t take this as gospel. It’s more of another data point. We’ll add new lists as they come in and simply average a player’s ranking and sort by that average ranking to get a consensus list. Of course, it’s not quite that simple because not every list goes into the same depth and not every player is ranked on each list.

So here are the basic “rules” for our consensus rankings. Anyone who has made at least one top ten will be included, with their rankings from other sites on there as well, whether that be in a top ten or not. So take Nick Yorke for example. He was not in Sox Prospects’s top ten, but he was there for BA and BP, so he gets their top ten rankings as well as his number 13 ranking from Sox Prospects.

It gets complicated, however, for a player like Noah Song, who was ranked in the top ten by SP and BP, but not by BA. BA has not yet extended their list beyond the top ten, so in cases for which there are no rankings we just give the player credit for being one spot outside of however many they list. In this case, Noah Song gets an 11 ranking from BA. It’s not perfect science, but I’m not a scientist so it works out.

This list will be updated as the offseason moves along and either more lists come out, rankings change or lists expand. We’ll feature the table in posts where it’s relevant and keep this post pinned on the front page.