Comparing the MLB top prospects lists

With multiple MLB top prospects lists out there, what are some similarities and differences among them?

There was a time when most baseball fans didn’t know much about the minor league players in their favorite team’s farm system. The MLB draft was not well publicized and very little information was available on the players who were drafted. This has changed with the information age we now live in. The amateur draft is more publicized than in the past and more fans are tracking players as they rise up through the minor leagues. In the spring, there are numerous publications and websites who put out their top prospects lists.

Historically, the biggest name when it comes to baseball prospects is Baseball America, which has prospect lists going back to 1990. That was back when the top-10 included Steve Avery at #1, John Olerud at #3 and Juan Gonzalez at #4. Down at #29 was Hall of Famer Frank Thomas. Two-sport star Deion Sanders made their list at #53 and someone named Reid Cornelius clocked in at #100.

Baseball America is no longer the only one putting out a top prospect lists. MLB.com has their MLB Pipeline top-100 and ESPN Insiders get Keith Law’s top-100. Two analytical sites, Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus, have top prospect lists. And here at Call to the Pen, Benjamin Chase released his list of the top 150 prospects in baseball. He followed that up with a question-and-answer session about those prospects.

With all of these lists at my disposal, I decided to compare them. For this comparison, only the top 100 players on each list are considered. For example, Baseball Prospectus has a top-101 and Call to the Pen has a top-150, but only the first 100 players on each of these lists will be part of this comparison.

It should be noted that Shohei Ohtani, the two-way player from Japan who would likely be #1 or #2 on every list, was not included on the Baseball Prospectus or Keith Law lists. BP’s Craig Goldstein said of excluding Ohtani, “The league he’s been in for multiple season’s main purpose is not development, and he’s not going to spend time in the minors unless he’s rehabbing an injury.” Similarly, Keith Law does not include foreign major leaguers from Japan’s NPB or Korea’s KBO. With that acknowledged, let’s compare the top-100 prospects lists.