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Colorado Rockies prospect rankings, mid-season 2018: top 30 summary

After revealing the Purple Row community’s Colorado Rockies top prospect list over the last couple of weeks, it’s time to wrap up the series by showing the whole list at once. Without further ado, here is the full mid-season 2018 Top 30 PuRPs list, including some voting stats:

Mid-Season 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 930 31 1 (31) 1 SS/2B/3B 2019
2 Peter Lambert 893 31 2 2 RHP 2019
3 Colton Welker 826 31 3 3 3B 2020
4 Ryan Rolison 812 31 2 3,4 LHP 2021
5 Garrett Hampson 805 31 2 4 SS/2B Now
6 Riley Pint 787 31 2 5 RHP 2021
7 Ryan Castellani 693 31 5 9 RHP 2019
8 Yency Almonte 691 31 4 8,10 RHP Now
9 Grant Lavigne 682 31 4 7 1B 2022
10 Ryan Vilade 681 31 5 8 SS/3B 2021
11 Sam Howard 571 31 8 12 LHP Now
12 Tyler Nevin 506 30 6 12 1B/3B 2020
13 Sam Hilliard 483 30 8 15 OF 2019
14 Daniel Montano 466 31 9 11 OF 2022
NR Forrest Wall 448 31 11 13 OF/2B 2019
NR Chad Spanberger 426 29 11 13,16-18 1B 2021
15 Jordan Patterson 414 27 5 11,17 OF Now
16 Brian Mundell 389 29 11 16 1B 2019
17 Yonathan Daza 369 30 12 14,19,20 OF 2019
18 Breiling Eusebio 298 27 14 20,21 LHP 2021
19 Ben Bowden 249 26 16 17 LHP 2019
20 Vince Fernandez 237 24 6 18,19,21,28 OF 2020
21 Jesus Tinoco 217 21 13 21 RHP 2019
22 Robert Tyler 183 21 16 22,23 RHP 2020
23 Roberto Ramos 158 23 17 24 1B 2020
24 Will Gaddis 145 23 20 21,26 RHP 2021
25 Dom Nunez 139 16 11 19,27 C 2019
26 Tommy Doyle 113 18 14 28 RHP 2020
27 Mitchell Kilkenny 82 11 15 26 RHP 2021
28 Mike Nikorak 81 15 16 28,29 RHP 2022
29 Willie Abreu 70 11 13 25 OF 2021
30 Terrin Vavra 57 12 18 28,29 SS 2021

It was an easy top prospect ranking for Brendan Rodgers in this edition of the PuRPs poll with a monopoly on the top spot of PuRPs ballots, receiving all 31 first place votes. This is his fourth top PuRP honors in a row. The top 11 players all cleared 550 points and were named on all 31 ballots, among 13 prospects to receive that honor. PuRPs Forrest Wall and Chad Spanberger were traded after polling had closed — they appear here on the list in a non-ranked capacity, but Willie Abreu and Terrin Vavra take their place as PuRPs.

As a reminder, 30 points were granted for a first place vote, 29 for second, etc. Until a player was named on 11 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 24 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.

Some more notes:

  • In all, 11 players were on every ballot, 57 players received at least one vote for this PuRPs list (down from 68 last time), 50 got mentioned on multiple ballots (down from 54), 32 were named on at least 11 ballots (and therefore were unmodified), and only four PuRPs were 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 six new names compared to the pre-season 2018 list. The new PuRPs are Ryan Rolison (4), Grant Lavigne (9), Jesus Tinoco (21), Roberto Ramos (23), Mitchell Kilkenny (27), and Terrin Vavra (30). Only Tinoco had previously been a PuRP on a prior list.

Breaking the list down by position, there are 14 pitchers (11 of them are nominally starters with a couple being a question mark, ten are righties, five are southpaws, and five are in the top 10), six outfielders, five corner infielders, four middle infielders, and one catcher. It looks like there are six PuRPs who are either in MLB or Triple-A (including three of the top five), 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.

Final Thoughts

Colorado’s system is weaker than it’s been in quite some time thanks in part to prospect graduation (great!) and some questionable draft strategy (college relievers in the top two rounds?). When Brendan Rodgers graduates, the system will be devoid of any high impact, top 50 talent (depending on how you feel about Peter Lambert) altogether.

It’s not a barren system by any means: there are several intriguing prospects and likely MLB contributors in the ranks. Still, outside of the top 10 to 12 names here it’s hard to see a bunch of prospects who will provide significant MLB value (outside of the bullpen), which is where I think the system is weakest. I think there are still a number of interesting lottery tickets in the lower echelons of the list, some of whom could develop into that top tier talent, but overall the Rockies will need to roll with the group they have now at the big club and the upper minors.

Considering some of those players not on the 25 man roster include former top five PuRPs with high ceilings like David Dahl, Raimel Tapia, and Jeff Hoffman, the Rockies are still in an enviable position with the young core they’ve assembled (including a lot of former top PuRPs on the big league club). I just don’t expect a lot of prospects of that caliber to be able to fill the gaps over the next couple of years outside the top five.

With that, I declare the mid-season 2018 Purple Row Prospects List complete! Thanks for reading!