2021 national rankings (in season)

I guess my response is what does "deserving" have to do with it?

This isn't picking a player for an award. This is an exercise in projecting a player's future value. Now, Song obviously has enormous error bars in that projection, right? There's a reason we have him with a 2 floor - he might never play baseball again. And that should get factored in, for sure!

But let me make a comparison: Feleipe Franks is also technically under contract with the Red Sox. Of course, he's not ranked in large part because he doesn't necessarily merit consideration, but even if we know, say, that he was just as good as Song, he wouldn't be ranked, and that's because there's basically no chance he's playing baseball any time soon. Song, however, as far as we know, intends to apply for a waiver to play baseball upon conclusion of flight school. And you're right - there's risk to that too! But I don't see how that's different than weighing how a pitcher will come back from Tommy John (and before you say guys come back from Tommy John with the same or better stuff, I would point you to players who got TJ and were never the same, or who kept breaking down). Is it exactly the same? Course not. But even how you weigh Tommy John is different from player to player - see how it affected Mata and Ward differently in our rankings. How you want to weigh that risk of how Song will even come back, if he does come back, will change from person to person.

Based purely on on-field ability, Song is arguably the best pitching prospect in the system. From there, you need to weigh the impact of his time away and the risk he comes back a completely different pitcher, as well as the potential for him not to come back at all. Here, we have him ranked 12th (and he's going to be roughly there next month). BA ranked him 30th. That's also fair (if a bit inconsistent with the BA's initial ranking, because I'm not sure what's new there based on what the write-up said, unless Alex heard something he's not sharing). FG has him 7th. I get that too, although I think they take a more scientific, the numbers are the numbers bent that may not factor in the things I discuss above. However, I would reject the premise that prospect rankings have anything to do with who "deserves" to be ranked where.

I do not much care how other sources rate potential for success for Song or Mata or Downs. I care how this forum ranks them. And I find it totally misleading to read that Song is rated at all. Unless you know better, and you have not suggested that you do, Song has not done baseball activities in a couple of years and there is not a date yet set when he will. There is no way to know how ready he will be if he does return. We see few college pitchers move quickly to the bigs even when they have not sat out for three years.

He is not 7th, he is not 12th, he is not 30th. Neither his baseball skills/potential nor his future career path is known. Your argument to keep him in the list is understood but is not convincing.

A better, more palatable approach might be to have a separate listing without ranking for Mr. Song. He is attached to the Sox so ignoring him entirely also ignores that fact. I do agree that the TJ guys need to be kept in a more prominent way than being dropped out of the rankings. I would not care, however, if the long-term injured got there own category with periodic updates featured prominently in their profiles.

Finally, there is no harm in doing things the way you presently do them. Rather, it is misleading to look at optimistic rankings of players who are not engaged in baseball activities.

This is why I thought the draft class rankings were the most interesting. Very curious to see where SP has Kavadas and Hickey after seeing the FG ratings. Also looking forward to seeing how Tyler McDonough does in Salem.

Feels really high on Yorke compared to other publications, especially seeing him mentioned and not Downs or Houck. I sort of agree in that I love Yorke (and probably prefer him over Downs at this point but sometimes think I am suffering from recency bias), but interesting to see Kiley go there already with him.

I'm probably oversimplfying by saying you can look at it as hed be in his top 70 if he was to put one out rather than 50. He may have talked with X amount of scouts who said yea keep our eyes on this kid so he may have given some level of consideration.

Downs just turned 23. There will be other, potentially better opportunities to sell high, especially given our lack of cap room.

Re: Downs

Player development is rarely a straight line, Downs is struggling in his first taste of AAA as a 23 yo coming off a missed season due to Covid, I'd hardly call that surprising and certainly wouldn't write him off because of it.

It seems to me downs has always been a kind of raw toolsy player. Hopefully it's just a one year stumble and he resets himself in the offseason and comes back with a vengeance next year.

I still can’t fathom how a, albeit very projectable guy who has not played even a half professional season can be ranked higher than a very projectable prospect with years of professional experience. I get Mayer has potential but he should be a two or less til he proves something on the field. IMHO.

It wasn't just Mayer. He had lawlar ranked one above and Leiter one below. Had Henry Davis on the list. He left Austin Martin off the list even though he's done quite well at double A in his first pro year and had a high pedigree when he got drafted just a year ago. I guess the barely drafted guys are the flavor of the month so to speak.

Not that we're necessarily owed an explanation, but just to confirm - there never actually was anything verified about what happened with Christopher Acosta right?