Orioles Top 10 Prospects: Weighted List (3)

I missed the Baseball America Orioles Top 10 Prospects, the first time around, when they published the list in early November. Came across it today, and figured I'd weigh in. Here's their list:

Baseball America, Top 10 Orioles Prospects

1. Manny Machado, SS
2. Zach Britton, LHP
3. Xavier Avery, OF
4. L.J. Hoes, 2B
5. Dan Klein, RHP
6. Wynn Pelzer, RHP
7. Mychal Givens, SS
8. Ryan Adams, 2B/3B
9. Ryan Berry, RHP
10. Jonathan Schoop, SS

There's nothing on here that's really earth-shaking to me... I agree with most of it. I'm not sure, though, how you rank Manny Machado, who has 39 professional plate appearances, ahead of Zach Britton. But that's kind of the way Baseball America works - they love high ceiling guys. As the prospect advances, they tend to move down their charts, as some of their warts get exposed.


Just for fun, I threw John Sickels (preliminary) rankings together on the same chart with Baseball America and FanGraphs. Here's what you've got:

And because I have a geeky slant, I assigned points to their rankings, to get an overall score based on the three above... Here's how that came out:

Notice that there are only 11 total players included on the 3 lists... a little strange, huh? Kind of hard to believe that all 3 sources came up with the same list... The way this sort of thing works is, the first reputable publication/source that does a prospect ranking for a given year kind of serves as the baseline for everyone else. Before they do their rankings, folks check out what someone like Baseball America put, and they kind of move that around and slot in their favorites.

Some other interesting tidbits:

• Notice how Matt Hobgood is nowhere on this list? That's what happens when you start ranking players before they'd had any meaningful pro experience, just because they're supposedly high-ceiling guys and high draft picks. That's one reason I don't like Baseball America's Rankings. You just have to hope that Manny Machado doesn't fall off next year.
• I still think Ronnie Welty should be on this list. Sickels didn't even include him in his Top 20; not sure why... but he did have him as an alternate. It's not like this organization has soooo many options to choose from. 
• I like that FanGraphs went a different way and included RHP Bobby Bundy on this list, and dropped Ryan Berry. I actually like Berry MORE than Bundy, but it would've been pretty damn boring to have everyone agree, right?