PTP's 2013 Fantasy Top 10 Lists: An Introduction

Welcome to Prospering Through Prospects’ 2013 Top 10 Fantasy prospect series: an in-depth look at every minor league name you need to know as you build up your dynasty leagues, restock your keepers and aim for value in redraft leagues as well.

This page will simply serve as a primer, letting you know what to expect from the series, my qualifications as a prospect analyst and how I determine these Fantasy-specific rankings.

Each organization will include a rundown of a farm system’s Top 10 Fantasy prospects, complete with a 75-word explanation of the ranking, an estimated time of arrival in the majors and a list of the Fantasy categories in which I expect that player to be helpful. The order in which the categories are listed is meant to suggest the categories in which I expect the player to be most useful, and only a standard 6x6 category base comes into play (HR, R, RBI, AVG, OBP, SB and W, K, ERA, WHIP, HLD, SV).

With that out of the way, let's tackle the obvious: Fantasy rankings are different from traditional MLB prospect rankings for several reasons.

For one, context matters: a player’s home ballpark, organization and competition for playing time don’t matter in a vacuum but they do in the Fantasy world, and such factors are weighted into the rankings.

Secondly, upside is often favored over probability, as the average talent on a Fantasy team is greater than the average talent of an MLB team. In other words, average regulars or No. 4 starters have plenty of value in the real world, but less so for Fantasy.

And finally, players don’t have to be well rounded to be excellent Fantasy prospects. Someone who steals 80 bases, strikes out 220 batters or mashes 40 homers and offers little else can be just as valuable as a better overall player with inferior counting stats. That’s just the nature of the game we play.

In terms of my qualifications: while I have no formal scouting experience, I do expend a tremendous amount of time and energy reading every scouting report I come across, watching hours and hours of video and attending minor league games whenever I can. I do believe I have a decent and improving eye for what makes a prospect great, but you may prefer to value me as an aggregator rather than a scout: someone familiar with industry prospect opinions, and someone able to translate those opinions into Fantasy advice. It’s a talent that applies only to a niche group of fanatics, for sure, but I find the conversations that stem from those who share this interest are genuinely enriching, and evaluating and talking prospects is something I truly love to do.

There will be no set schedule for the organizational rankings, although you can expect three or four a week from now until the start of the MLB season. I will also launch a Top 150 Fantasy Prospects list before the season begins, but that's a bit farther down the road.  

Feel free to compliment, condemn or compare these rankings with me here on the site or at @BenCarsley22, where I promise all Tweets will be answered.

I hope you enjoy the rankings, and I hope they bring you Fantasy success.

Best,

Ben Carsley