Colorado Rockies prospect rankings, mid-season 2023: Top 30 summary

After revealing the Purple Row community’s Colorado Rockies top prospect list over the last couple weeks, 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 Monday to conclude the series.

Without further ado, here is the full mid-season 2023 Top 30 PuRPs list, including some voting stats:

This time around, shortstop Adael Amador topped the poll with 12 of the 22 first place votes (including mine). Outfielder Zac Veen got seven of the remaining first place votes, and both players generally were in the top three. Outfielder Yanquiel Fernandez jumped up nine places from pre-season to finish third, while two Tennessee Volunteers (first round pitcher Chase Dollander and outfielder Jordan Beck) rounded out the top five.

As a reminder, 30 points were granted for a first place vote, 29 for second, etc. Until a player was named on seven 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. Benny Montgomery and Gabriel Hughes had the same point total, ballot count, and high ballot, but Montgomery had the high mode ballot to edge out Hughes. Victor Vodnik and Grant Lavigne were also tied, with Vodnik getting the edge due to appearing on more ballots. Ties were also broken down-ballot according to voting rules. Polling concluded in early August and since then, no player receiving votes has had their eligibility status change.

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, a look at multi-ballot players as well as the write-ups of the honorable mention PuRPs.

Some more notes:

• This was a list that had a strong consensus, as 17 players were listed on all 22 ballots, including the top 16. Beyond that, the entire top 21 was listed on at least 19 of the 22 ballots, forming a clear tier of players that the electorate felt were worthy.
• 63 players received at least one vote for this PuRPs list (up from 51 last time), 44 got mentioned on multiple ballots (up from 52), while 33 were named on at least seven ballots (and therefore were unmodified). Here is a link to the polling thread.
• In this edition of the PuRPs list, there were nine new names compared to the pre-season 2023 list, only one of which (Aaron Schunk at 25) had previously been PuRPs. Three came from the draft: Chase Dollander (4), Sean Sullivan (17), and Cole Carrigg (18). Three came from trades: Jake Madden (21), Mason Albright (24), and Victor Vodnik (26). The other new PuRPs are Robert Calaz (20) and Michael Prosecky (29).
• The biggest risers vs. the mid-season list were Carson Palmquist (up 12 slots), Fernandez (up 9), and Sterlin Thompson (up 7). The biggest fallers who remained on the list were Chris McMahon (down 13), Grant Lavigne (down 7), Jaden Hill (down 7), and Warming Bernabel (down 7).
• Breaking the list down by position, there are 15 pitchers (most of which are nominally starters with a few potentially on their way to a relief role; ten are righties, five are southpaws, and two are in the top ten), five corner infielders, five outfielders, three middle infielders, and two catchers — there’s some positional flexibility in there of course.

I’ll have more on the overall system in my concluding post on Monday.