Colorado Rockies prospects: Brendan Rodgers leads Baseball Prospectus top 10

Baseball Prospectus released its top 10 prospects for the Rockies today. (You can read it here without a subscription.) The one line summary reads: “The Rockies system has thinned out at the top a little bit, but it’s still chock full o’ major-league-ready talent.” The thinning is due to the graduations of David Dahl, Jon Gray, and Trevor Story. The team is absent three top 10 guys from last year, but the system is still strong.

The top 10 and the additional players profiled contain a few aggressive rankings and some skeptical looks at former top team prospects. Here’s the list:

1. SS Brendan Rodgers
2. OF Raimel Tapia
3. RHP Jeff Hoffman
4. RHP Riley Pint
5. C Tom Murphy
6. LHP Kyle Freeland
7. RHP Antonio Senzatela
8. RHP Ryan Castellani
9. RHP Peter Lambert
10. 3B/1B Ryan McMahon

Baseball Prospectus has always been the high team on Tapia. They (Jason Parks at the time) ranked Tapia third overall prior to the 2014 season, when he only had a year at Grand Junction under his belt. Tapia’s ranked second overall here, and they (Jeffrey Paternostro now) peg his ceiling as someone who challenges for batting titles on a regular basis and his likely outcome as a starting outfielder who hits well enough but doesn’t offer much else.

This is one of the more aggressive rankings for Peter Lambert. That he’s 19 years old and already exhibits good fastball command and a second offering, the changeup, better than his fastball, is the rationale. Lambert didn’t make Baseball America’s top 10 (otherwise the lists have the same players in different order). The person not on the BP top 10 that is on the BA top 10 is Germán Márquez.

But that’s because Márquez is deemed the eleventh man here. Despite differences in major-league proximity, Márquez is compared to Antonio Senzatela in this write-up, and Senzatela has the edge.

Other notable players to receive words outside of the top 10 are Dom Nunez and the fact that he’s lost his spot in the top 10 despite improving his game, and Forrest Wall, for his troubling season and the pivotal one in front of him.

Baseball Prospectus also ranks the team’s top talents 25 and under. We guessed at what this list might look like in December. This list, like the prospect list, is a reminder that we might be forgetting about Kyle Freeland too much. Like Tyler Anderson, his absence from the field could cause forgetfulness about how solid of a pitcher he might be, and how polished he really is.

1. Nolan Arenado
2. David Dahl
3. Brendan Rogers
4. Trevor Story
5. Jon Gray
6. Raimel Tapia
7. Jeff Hoffman
8. Riley Pint
9. Tom Murphy
10. Kyle Freeland

This list is a great reminder why the Rockies future is brighter than ever despite the farm system rankings beginning to tick down. Another three, and possibly a fourth, will also graduate from prospect status within the next year. The Rockies future now rests on these prospects having as successful of a transition as Dahl, Story and Gray last season.