Red Sox Top Prospects - Compiled List

by The Laser Show on Feb 14, 2026 1:24 PM EST

I posted this at Over The Monster, and I thought I'd post it here too, for anyone who may be interested...

With all the organizational top prospect lists being published lately, I thought it would be helpful to make a compiled Red Sox top prospect list using average rankings from the various prospect lists out there. After a bit of research, I found 7 lists to use, as follows:

-Minor League Ball (John Sickels, Top 22, updated 1/20/12)

-MLB.com (Jonathan Mayo, Top 20, published early February 2012)

-Baseball America (Jim Callis, Top 10, 1/6/12)

-Baseball Prospectus (Kevin Goldstein, Top 20, 2/14/12)

-ESPN (Keith Law, Top 10, 2/9/12)

-SoxProspects.com (updated 2/10/12)

-Fangraphs (Marc Hulet, Top 15, 12/23/11)

The oddball of the group is probably the Fangraphs list, but I wanted to use as many lists as possible, and I think their prospect coverage is pretty decent.

Without further adieu, here is the list (as well as my notes below it):

		Average Ranking	Appears on how many lists?
1	Xander Bogaerts	1.7	7
2	Will Middlebrooks	2.0	7

3	Ryan Lavarnway	5.4	7
4	Blake Swihart	5.9	7
5	Anthony Ranaudo	6.0	7
6	Matt Barnes	6.4	7
7	Brandon Jacobs	6.6	7
8	Bryce Brentz	7.0	7
9	Garin Cecchini	7.4	7

10	Jose Iglesias	10.0	5
11	Jackie Bradley	11.1	6
12	Sean Coyle	11.3	4
13	Felix Doubront	11.3	3

14	Henry Owens	13.3	4
15	Drake Britton	13.5	4
16	Alex Wilson	13.7	3
17	Kolbrin Vitek	14.0	4

18	Stolmy Pimentel	16.5	4
19	Junichi Tazawa	18.7	3
20	Brandon Workman	18.8	4
21	Jose Vinicio	18.8	5

22	Cody Kukuk	21.0	3
23	Oscar Tejada		2
24	Williams Jerez		2
25	Christian Vazquez		2
26	Juan Carlos Linares		2

To make the compiled list, I just calculated the mean ranking position for each prospect among the 7 lists (or as many lists as each player appeared on). As you can see on the list, the Top 9 were included on all 7 lists. After the Top 9, things got a little trickier since it's difficult to figure out how to order two prospects if one appears on 5 lists and the other appears on 6 lists. After reviewing each specific example though, I thought it was fairly clean to leave the order based on the average ranking positions, even when the number of lists appeared on isn't identical. For example, one could argue that Wilson and Vitek should be switched, since their average ranking is so close, and Vitek appeared on 4 lists and Wilson on 3.

My other notes and thoughts:

-I added spaces between sets of rankings to delineate where "tiers" of prospects seemed to differentiate, based on the clustering of average ranking position for each "tier". I think the tiers do a really nice job of giving a quick and simple picture of the different levels of prospects in this deep system.

-I included every prospect that appeared on at least one of the 6 lists (not counting SoxProspects, since their list goes to 60). I didnt list the average ranking for the last 4 prospects since they each appeared on just 1 list besides SoxProspects.

-Bogaerts and Middlebrooks obviously stand out as the consensus top prospects in the system. Bogaerts was #1 on 4 of the 7 lists, and Middlebrooks was #1 on the other 3 lists.

-I was a little surprised how high Swihart ended up. Jim Callis and Keith Law were the highest on Swihart, ranking him #3 and #2 on their lists, respectively.

-I thought Barnes would end up ahead of Ranaudo, and indeed he was ranked higher on 4 of the 7 lists. Mayo had Ranaudo #5 and Barnes #12, which hurt Barnes's position (and which I strongly disagree with).

What are your thoughts? Any big surprises here? Feel free to question anything that isnt clear on the list or in my methodology.

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Comments

Nice List! I would like to see the highest and lowest ranking of each as well.

by stealthdevil on Feb 14, 2026 2:08 PM EST reply actions

Thanks

And good idea about high and low ranking. I’ll add that if/when I get a chance.

by The Laser Show on Feb 15, 2026 9:24 AM EST up reply actions

Derrick Gibson?

Performance has obviously been meh these past couple years, but does he have enough projection left to make it onto any deep lists? I figure you’d know if anyone, after combing through so many lists.

Oh, and I do a similar synthesis each year for a few different lists, but use a different approach. Instead of averaging the original ranks (which I think is fraught with problems), I assign a point score for each rank, then sum the total points a player received across all rankers. Makes it easier to deal with guys only appearing on some lists, and still gives you tiers, etc. Just food for thought.

by siddfynch on Feb 14, 2026 4:50 PM EST reply actions

Gibson

Gibson doesnt show up on any lists at this point; not even on SoxProspects where they rank the top 60. He definitely seems kinda stalled out. Good speed, good range, but cant really hit or throw. Decent # of walks, but tons of K’s and no power. 3 full seasons in the minors, but he’s still in A-ball.

Thanks for the thoughts on the ranking method. Do you mean that you assign weighted values (like more points for prospects ranked in the top 5 or something)? I wanted to keep it simple so that I could list an “Average Ranking” that was straightforward, but I can see how your method may produce a more meaningful result.

by The Laser Show on Feb 15, 2026 9:33 AM EST up reply actions

Thanks on Gibson

Is he still at SS though? I thought his arm was ok, but you’d know better than me. I’d love to get a current scouting report on him.

Regarding the rankings, easiest way is to assign a point score of X-1 to John’s #1 prospect, X-2 to his #2, etc., as far down as you care to go. Do the same for each other list you want to include. Don’t worry if some lists are longer than others. Add the points for each player (eg, pivot tables in Excel) , and then sort from highest to lowest cumulative points. You’ll probably have harper/trout/Moore clustered really high, a bunch of A- guys lower, etc. Guys that show up on only a few lists will be penalized by not accumulating as many points, which is more reasonable than if they scored a high average despite being unbanked by some.

You can get pretty fancy with how you assign the points to different ranks, but thats the simple summary. I think a lot of people on this site now use this method, which got kicked around quite a bit in 2008 or so.

by siddfynch on Feb 15, 2026 11:03 AM EST up reply actions