After revealing the Purple Row community’s Colorado Rockies top prospect list over the last few weeks, it’s time to wrap up the series by showing the whole list at once. Without further ado, here is the full preseason 2018 Top 30 PuRPs list, including some voting stats:
Preseason 2018 PuRPs List
| Rank | Player | Total | # Ballots | High Ballot | Mode Ballot | Position | ETA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Player | Total | # Ballots | High Ballot | Mode Ballot | Position | ETA |
| 1 | Brendan Rodgers | 1,017 | 34 | 1 (31) | 1 | SS | 2019 |
| 2 | Ryan McMahon | 976 | 34 | 1 (3) | 2 | 1B/2B/3B | Now |
| 3 | Riley Pint | 946 | 34 | 2 | 3 | RHP | 2020 |
| 4 | Peter Lambert | 878 | 34 | 3 | 4 | RHP | 2020 |
| 5 | Colton Welker | 856 | 34 | 3 | 5 | 3B | 2020 |
| 6 | Ryan Castellani | 846 | 34 | 3 | 7 | RHP | 2019 |
| 7 | Ryan Vilade | 810 | 34 | 3 | 5,7 | SS/3B | 2021 |
| 8 | Yency Almonte | 803 | 34 | 3 | 8 | RHP | 2018 |
| 9 | Garrett Hampson | 711 | 34 | 6 | 9 | SS/2B | 2019 |
| 10 | Sam Howard | 677 | 34 | 4 | 11 | LHP | 2018 |
| 11 | Tom Murphy | 671 | 34 | 5 | 11 | C | Now |
| 12 | Tyler Nevin | 521 | 33 | 8 | 14 | 1B/3B | 2020 |
| 13 | Brian Mundell | 501 | 33 | 8 | 13 | 1B | 2019 |
| 14 | Jordan Patterson | 490 | 32 | 5 | 12,13 | OF | Now |
| 15 | Daniel Montano | 463 | 29 | 8 | 16 | OF | 2022 |
| 16 | Forrest Wall | 405 | 31 | 10 | 15 | OF/2B | 2019 |
| 17 | Sam Hilliard | 371 | 31 | 10 | 16,24 | OF | 2019 |
| 18 | Breiling Eusebio | 339 | 28 | 12 | 15 | LHP | 2020 |
| 19 | Yonathan Daza | 297 | 29 | 10 | 28 | OF | 2019 |
| 20 | Ben Bowden | 295 | 27 | 12 | 18 | LHP | 2019 |
| 21 | Dom Nunez | 281 | 27 | 12 | 23 | C | 2019 |
| 22 | Mike Tauchman | 270 | 28 | 14 | 20 | OF | Now |
| 23 | Will Gaddis | 261 | 26 | 14 | 19 | RHP | 2021 |
| 24 | Robert Tyler | 237 | 23 | 12 | 20 | RHP | 2020 |
| 25 | Mike Nikorak | 187 | 27 | 13 | 27 | RHP | 2021 |
| 26 | Willie Abreu | 169 | 19 | 12 | 23,27 | OF | 2020 |
| 27 | Jairo Diaz | 159 | 17 | 12 | 24 | RHP | Now |
| 28 | Vince Fernandez | 155 | 14 | 10 | 18 | OF | 2020 |
| 29 | Chad Spanberger | 137 | 24 | 16 | 28 | 1B | 2020 |
| 30 | Tommy Doyle | 129 | 18 | 14 | 22,29 | RHP | 2020 |
It was an easy first place finish for Brendan Rodgers in this edition of the PuRPs poll, his second top billing in a row. He received 31 of 34 first place votes—the other three went to No. 2 Ryan McMahon. The top eight players all cleared 800 points over the 34 ballots and the top 11 players were named on every ballot.
As a reminder, 30 points were granted for a first place vote, 29 for second, etc. Until a player was named on 12 ballots, his vote totals were modified on a sliding scale to avoid an individual ballot having too much say over the community forecast. In this edition of the list this rule was only applied to one player in the top 30. For more info on voting numbers for players that didn’t quite make the top 30, please check out the intro post to this edition of the PuRPs list. No ties were broken in the top 30.
There was a pretty good consensus about the top 25 prospects, forming a clear tier of players that the electorate felt were potential MLB impact players by virtue of the fact that they were named over two-thirds of the ballots. Looking back on past PuRPs lists, it appears that Colorado’s farm system is slightly weaker than it was in midseason thanks to the graduation of Raimel Tapia and trades that bolstered the 2017 play-off run.
Some more notes:
- In all, 11 players were on every ballot, 68 players received at least one vote for this PuRPs list (up from 66 last time), 54 got mentioned on multiple ballots (down from 58), 33 were named on at least 12 ballots (and therefore were unmodified), and only one PuRP was named on fewer than half of the ballots, showing that most of the list was more or less agreed upon by the community, if not necessarily the order. Here is a link to the polling thread.
- In this edition of the PuRPs list there were four new names compared to the midseason 2017 list. The new PuRPs are Breiling Eusebio (18), Yonathan Daza (19), Michael Tauchman (22), and Willie Abreu (26).
Breaking the list down by position, there are 12 pitchers (10 of them are nominally starters with a couple being a question mark, 9 are righties, three are southpaws, and five are in the top 10), eight outfielders, five corner infielders, three middle infielders, and two catchers. It looks like there are at least nine PuRPs will start 2018 either in MLB or Triple-A (including four of the top ten), so it won’t be long before we start seeing some of these guys producing as regulars for the Rockies, and some new faces on future PuRP lists.
With that, I declare the preseason 2018 Purple Row Prospects List complete! Thanks for reading!