2014 Season End Rankings Voting

brinefly

30. Acosta

Chris?

1. Mookie Betts
2. Blake Swihart
3. Rafael Devers
4. Henry Owens
5. Eduardo Rodriguez
6. Manuel Margot
7. Matt Barnes
8. Brian Johnson
9. Michael Chavis
10. Trey Ball

11. Garin Cecchini
12. Anthony Ranaudo
13. Michael Kopech
14. Edwin Escobar
15. Wendell Rijo
16. Sam Travis
17. Deven Marrero
18. Sean Coyle
19. Teddy Stankiewicz
20. Nick Longhi

21. Simon Mercedes
22. Luis Diaz
23. Henry Ramos
24. Alex Hassan
25. Bryce Brentz
26. Heath Hembree
27. Anderson Espinoza
28. Chris Acosta
29. Javier Guerra
30. Travis Shaw

31. Steven Wright
32. Noe Ramirez
33. Carlos Asuaje
34. Jamie Callahan
35. Jonathan Aro
36. Joe Gunkel
37. Jake Cosart
38. Jhonathan Diaz
39. Justin Haley
40. Cody Kukuk

41. Josh Ockimey

1. Betts
2. Swihart
(I would have slotted Vazquez here)

3. Owens
4. Johnson
5. Rodriguez
6. Margot

7. Chavis
8. Devers
9. Barnes
10. Ranaudo
11. Marrero
12. Cecchini

13. Ball
14. Kopech
15. Coyle
16. Escobar
17. Luis Diaz
18. Stankiewicz
19. Guerra

20. Travis
21. Asuaje
22. Blair
23. Rijo
24. Shaw
25. Ramos
26. Haley
27. Noe Ramirez

28. Jhonathan Diaz
29. Dubon
30. Longhi
31. V. Acosta (2B)
32. Kurcz
33. Cellestino
34. Hembree
35. Espinoza
36. Wright
37. Kukuk
38. C. Acosta (P)
39. Mercedes
40. Whitson

41* Cosart

First take, subject to change. Some tough decisions on who didn't make it (particularly Mars, Hassan, Brentz, Luis Alex. Basabe (CF), Cosart).

I segregated by my perceived tiers. Tier 2 is the closest, I could on any given day come up with any order for Owens, Johnson, Rodriguez and Margot including a complete reversal.

Changes: forgot about two relievers, Cellestino and Kurcz.

1. Mookie Betts
2. Blake Swihart
3. Henry Owens
4. Brian Johnson
5. Eduardo Rodriguez
6. Rafael Devers
7. Matt Barnes
8. Manuel Margot
9. Anthony Ranaudo
10. Sean Coyle

11. Trey Ball
12. Michael Chavis
13. Garin Cecchini
14. Edwin Escobar
15. Wendell Rijo
16. Sam Travis
17. Deven Marrero
18. Alex Hassan
19. Teddy Stankiewicz
20. Henry Ramos

21. Travis Shaw
22. Luis Diaz
23. Heath Hembree
24. Carlos Asuaje
25. Bryce Brentz
26. Michael Kopech
27. Jake Cosart
28. Nick Longhi
29. Steven Wright
30. Anderson Espinoza

31. Javier Guerra
32. Carson Blair
33. Simon Mercedes
34. Chris Acosta
35. Jonathan Aro
36. Noe Ramirez
37. Jamie Callahan
38. Jhonathan Diaz
39. Justin Haley
40. Keury De La Cruz

41. Josh Ockimey

Full details on the voting are here.

Short version: here are the players and their rankings by the SP Community:


Mookie Betts 1

Blake Swihart 2

Henry Owens 3

Manuel Margot 4

Eduardo Rodriguez 5

Rafael Devers 6

Matt Barnes 7

Brian Johnson 8

Michael Chavis 9

Garin Cecchini 10

Anthony Ranaudo 11

Trey Ball 12

Sean Coyle 13

Deven Marrero 13

Edwin Escobar 15

Michael Kopech 16

Sam Travis 17

Wendell Rijo 18

Teddy Stankiewicz 19

Nick Longhi 20

Carlos Asuaje 21

Travis Shaw 22

Henry Ramos DL 23

Bryce Brentz 24

Simon Mercedes 25

Luis Diaz 26

Steven Wright 27

Javier Guerra 28

Anderson Espinoza 29

Mauricio Dubon 30

Justin Haley 31

Jake Cosart 32

Heath Hembree 33

Christopher Acosta 34

Noe Ramirez 35

Alex Hassan 36

Cody Kukuk 37

Jhonathan Diaz 38

Tommy Layne 39

Danny Mars 39

Joe Gunkel DL 41

Jamie Callahan 41

Carson Blair 43

Victor Acosta 44

Dalier Hinojosa 45

Aaron Kurcz 46

Dan Butler 47

Keury De La Cruz 48

Pat Light 49

Drake Britton 50

Reed Gragnani 51

Jantzen Witte 51

Keith Couch 53

Derrik Gibson 54

Yoan Aybar 55

Kevin McAvoy 56

Jonathan Aro 57

Raymel Flores 58

Enmanuel DeJesus 58

Gabe Speier 60

Josh Ockimey 61

Myles Smith 62

Cole Sturgeon 63

German Taveras 64

Robby Scott 64

Miguel Celestino 66

Alixon Suarez 67

Tzu-Wei Lin 68

Joseph Monge 69

Williams Jerez 70

Aneury Tavarez 70

Ryan Verdugo 70

Jose Almonte 73

Trenton Kemp 73

Karsten Whitson 75

Ty Buttrey 75

Daniel Gonzalez 75

Luis Alexander Basabe 78

Jordan Betts 78

Incredible kudos to dd for going to the heroic labors to compile and crunch the data.

There is, however, a flaw in the way the rankings were generated. The question is, how do you deal with guys who were omitted from a ballot?

There were 79 players who got votes, but each ballot consisted of just 40 or 41 names and hence 39 or 38 blank spots. In order to generate an average ranking, you need to insert an invented number into the blank spots. (The very clever way dd did this, without making it visible, is to format that number as white!)

What should that number be? If each ballot had 38 or 39 unranked players, then the average unranked player would be 40 + middle of 39 players, i.e. 20 = 60, or 41 + middle of 38 players, i.e. 19.5 = 60.5. Call it 60.

Alas, dd used 79, which doesn't work. That creates far too great a penalty for not ranking a guy. supersquid left Rijo off his ballot, but there's no way he thinks Rijo is the #79 prospect. (In fact, it's likely that he thinks he's somewhere better than our in-a-vacuum guess of 60, but we'll get to that in a moment.)

As a result, Rijo is shown as being behind Sam Travis. Travis was ranked on every ballot, averaging 20.3. Rijo was ranked on every ballot but one, averaging 17.3. Everyone else had Rijo ahead of Travis, 17.3 to 20.5, but supersquid had Travis 16 and Rijo unranked. We don't know where ss would have ranked Rijo, but as long as it was 77th or better, Rijo is ahead on average ranking.

So, you can substitute an invisible 60 for all the invisible 79s in dd's spreadsheet and get a corrected ranking.

But I think you can go further. It seems likely that the unranked players on any ballot roughly follow the consensus order of everyone else. It's not going to follow it exactly, but it's going to skew in that direction. So the way I like to do such rankings is to split the difference between assuming that the unranked players followed the consensus exactly, and that there was no pattern at all, and so substitute (41 + 60)/2 for the highest-rated unranked player on a 40-person ballot, (42 + 60)/2 for the second highest-rated unranked player, and so on.

Here are the changes that result, from both the corrected method and the extra-tweaked method.

17 and 18. Rijo is ahead of Travis, as he is in the SP rankings.

20 and 21. Asauje is ahead of Longhi, ditto.

24 through 27. This was originally Brentz, Mercedes, Diaz, Wright. The simple correction makes that Wright, Mercedes, Brentz, Diaz, while the tweaked one makes it Wright, Mercedes, Diaz, Brentz, which is how SP has it.

32 through 38. This gets quite re-arranged, with both the corrected and tweaked version much more resembling SP's.

Orig Correct Tweaked SP
Haley Hembree Hassan Hassan
Cosart Haley Hembree Hembree
Hembree Hassan Haley Ramirez
Acosta Cosart Cosart Acosta
Ramirez Acosta Kukuk Cosart
Hassan Ramirez Acosta Haley
Kukuk Kukuk Ramirez Kukuk

45 and 46. In the tweaked version only, Kurcz is ahead of Hinojosa.

If dd messages me with his e-mail address, I'll send him a spreadsheet with the revised number crunching, and let him choose between the simple and tweaked correction (but I rather like the latter).

Oh, and dd's spreadsheet uses the previous SP rankings. They can of course be replaced with the current ones with everyone +1 to include Betts.

I have traditionally given a default value in the 45 to 48 range. I actually think 60 is a little high and too punitive.

Maybe 48?

Thank god we got that sorted out.

Seriously, thanks for your work on this, as always, Double D. And thanks for your suggestion, Eric.

Cole Sturgeeon.  Here are 61 - 78, new & old rankings:


Cole Sturgeon 61 63

Gabe Speier 62 60

German Taveras 62 64

Robby Scott 62 64

Miguel Celestino 65 66

Josh Ockimey 66 61

Alixon Suarez 67 67

Tzu-Wei Lin 68 68

Joseph Monge 69 69

Aneury Tavarez 70 70

Ryan Verdugo 70 70

Williams Jerez 70 70

Jose Almonte 73 73

Trenton Kemp 73 73

Daniel Gonzalez 75 75

Karsten Whitson 75 75

Ty Buttrey 75 75

Jordan Betts 78 78

Luis Alexander Basabe 78 78

Glad folks found that helpful!

I find these collective rankings to be fascinating. I actually messed around with the individual rankings and may come back here to report on that. IIRC, there was a correlation between number of member posts and conforming to the consensus, up to a certain point, and then it breaks down completely. IOW, the real vets tend to be iconoclastic, but if you exclude them, there is a tendency for the more experienced posters to think more like one another. All of that makes perfect sense if you figure than the members with the highest vote totals may also simply be more opinionated.

And I'm certainly going to compare my own ranking to the both the community and editors' consensuses, and privately tweak it. In fact, I already (after the fact, just for the record) promoted Rodriguez up two notches.