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Colorado Rockies prospect rankings, mid-season 2021: Top 30 summary

Zac Veen, Ryan Rolison, Benny Montgomery, Michael Toglia and Elehuris Montero round out the top five in mid-season voting.

After revealing the Purple Row community’s Colorado Rockies top prospect list over the last week, it’s time to show the whole list at once with some voting stats. I’ll also have some thoughts on the state of the system as a whole on Monday to conclude the series.

Without further ado, here is the full mid-season 2021 Top 30 PuRPs list, including some voting stats:

Mid-Season 2021 Purple Row Prospects List

Rank Player Total # Ballots High Ballot Mode Ballot Position ETA
Rank Player Total # Ballots High Ballot Mode Ballot Position ETA
1 Zac Veen 686 23 1 (21) 1 OF 2024
2 Ryan Rolison 646 23 1 (1) 3 LHP 2022
3 Benny Montgomery 613 22 2 2 OF 2025
4 Michael Toglia 588 23 2 4 1B 2022
5 Elehuris Montero 564 23 2 7 3B/1B 2022
6 Colton Welker 546 23 1 (1) 5,7 3B/1B Now
7 Drew Romo 540 23 2 8 C 2024
8 Chris McMahon 484 23 4 8,9,10 RHP 2023
9 Jaden Hill 476 23 4 7 RHP 2024
10 Ryan Vilade 446 22 2 5,6,12 OF 2022
11 Brenton Doyle 440 22 7 9,11 OF 2023
12 Ezequiel Tovar 437 23 5 9,13 SS 2023
13 Helcris Olivarez 418 23 4 9,10,12,13 LHP 2023
14 Ryan Feltner 336 22 11 11 RHP 2022
15 Grant Lavigne 323 23 6 15 1B 2023
16 Joe Rock 314 23 14 16 LHP 2025
17 Sam Weatherly 306 23 11 11 LHP 2024
18 Adael Amador 306 22 12 14 SS 2025
19 Aaron Schunk 257 21 7 17 2B/3B 2023
20 Karl Kauffmann 242 22 10 16,17 RHP 2023
21 Mitchell Kilkenny 233 21 10 22 RHP 2023
22 Willie MacIver 191 22 17 23 C 2022
23 Jameson Hannah 171 19 14 20,24 OF 2022
24 Hunter Goodman 121 14 15 23 C 2024
25 Julio Carreras 117 14 13 21,23,27,29 3B/SS 2024
26 McCade Brown 105 13 19 19 RHP 2025
27 Eddy Diaz 94 13 11 26 2B/SS 2024
28 Noah Davis 89 14 13 29 RHP 2022
29 Warming Bernabel 81 11 6 26,29 3B 2024
30 Will Ethridge 67 12 14 26 RHP 2023

After finishing a close second in the previous poll, 2020 first rounder Zac Veen ran away with votes this time around, garnering 21 of 23 first place votes. 2018 first-round pick Ryan Rolison was a strong second, while 2021 first-rounder Benny Montgomery and 2019 first-rounder Michael Toglia rounded out an all-first-round top four.

In all, 13 players were listed on all 23 ballots and another seven were included on 22 ballots, including the top 18. There was a pretty good consensus about the top 23 prospects, forming a clear tier of players that the electorate felt were worthy by virtue of the fact that they were named on at least 19 of the 23 ballots. Polling was conducted in August 2021 after the trade deadline, so all major transactions had been finalized.

As a reminder, 30 points were granted for a first place vote, 29 for second, etc. Until a player was named on five 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 wasn’t applied to any 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 as well as the write-ups of the honorable mention PuRPs. Several ties were broken this time around, both in the top 30 (Sam Weatherly was on more ballots than Adael Amador) and the ‘others receiving votes’ section.

Some more notes:

  • 59 players received at least one vote for this PuRPs list (up from 51 last time), 46 got mentioned on multiple ballots (up from 38), and 32 were named on at least eight ballots (and therefore were unmodified). All PuRPs were named on at least 11 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 nine new names compared to the preseason 2021 list. The new PuRPs are Benny Montgomery (3), Elehuris Montero (4), Jaden Hill (9), Joe Rock (16), Willie MacIver (22). Hunter Goodman (24), McCade Brown (26), Noah Davis (28), and Warming Bernabel (29). Seven of these new PuRPs weren’t in the system the last time polling was conducted, coming either by the draft or trade.

Breaking the list down by position, there are 12 pitchers (all of which are nominally starters with a few potentially on their way to a relief role; eight are righties, four are southpaws, and three are in the top 10), five outfielders, five corner infielders, three middle infielders, two who could play either a corner or middle infield position, and three catchers.

Though the upper minors have largely been bereft of highly-ranked prospects this year, 2022 should see seven to 10 of these PuRPs play in Triple-A or the big leagues. There’s going to be a large reckoning on the 40-man roster this offseason given the lost development time in 2020, which I’ll talk more about in my state of the system post. The bottom line is that I expect to see quite a bit of churn on the list in the next year through organizational changes or MLB service time.