MLB Prospect Lists: How To Tell Them Apart

As MLB Top Prospect lists come out from throughout the land, which is best? What does each look for? Why are they all so different?

Hopefully a few readers caught the list put together at the beginning of January on Call To The Pen. I posted in the introduction to each portion of that list exactly what I was looking for in doing my list and where I got my information.

While I’ll never claim my information to be perfect or the best by any means, it is sometimes confusing and even frustrating to the average fan to see the abundance of top lists that come out and the incredible amount of variance in each one.

Rather than getting upset about those differences, a bit of explanation on some of the bigger national lists could help readers to understand what they’re looking at and why their favorite team is represented well in one list and not another.

We will take a look at 8 different sources for a top prospect list over the next few pages and evaluate what each one brings to the table, for better or worse. While this by no means is a comprehensive list of all the places that put together a list (heck, my list isn’t evaluated!), it should be a good primer.

If you do have any other places you’d like to know more about, feel free to ask more in the comments!

Next: BA and BP