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We covered our own prospect rankings, the top 15 list from Fangraphs and the Baseball America top 10 list. In recent weeks, we've seen several more lists come out featuring a bevy of Cardinal prospects, let's recap.
Baseball Prospectus Top 10
This is a pretty standard upside list. Swap out Patrick Wisdom for Stephen Piscotty and you essentially wind up with the Baseball America list.
Lots of consistency on the order of the pitchers as well. Both BP and BA go with Miller, Martinez, Rosenthal, Wacha, Jenkins. That's awfully close to what we had on our list but Tyler Lyons snuck into our list with some stellar statistics and proximity to the majors.
That's really the debate you have to have when comparing Lyons and Jenkins. Does Jenkins stay healthy and progress over the next three years versus will Lyons stuff translate to the majors in any appreciable way? There much lower risk of complete flameout with a guy like Lyons but also, likely, a lower ceiling.
If anything, this list illustrates just how cemented the conventional wisdom is about the Cardinals system. 1) It's a great system, 2) Oscar Taveras is the universal top prospect for the Cardinals and 3) the top 10 prospects barely deviate from list to list.
If anything the Cardinals 11-20 prospects are the more interesting ones if only because there's more variance in response. Where does Anthony Garcia come in at? How much do you believe in the production pitchers who have middling stuff like Seth Maness, Tyler Lyons, John Gast or Sam Gaviglio?
One other passing note: James Ramsey was jumped by later 2012 draft picks on every top 10 list -- even the somewhat inscrutable Fangraphs list.
Top 100 lists
Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus have both come out with their laundry lists of top prospects. Baseball America has Taveras, Miller, Martinez, Rosenthal, Wacha and Wong. Baseball Prospectus has Tyrell Jenkins making the cut as well.
Baseball America slips Dylan Bundy in between Jurickson Profar and Oscar Tavares. That's a questionable call to me if only because of the fact that pitchers are generally a higher risk for injury. Profar would be my #1 overall mainly due to position and defense though I remain a staunch defender of Taveras in the field.