Two years ago, we polled the Bless You Boys community to create our 2015 preseason top prospect rankings. It was a successful endeavor, but one that proved difficult due to the shallow depth of the Detroit Tigers farm system at the time. If you peruse the above link, you’ll see why.
However, this is a new day. The Tigers have prospects now, for better or worse. We already put out a set of rankings prior to the start of the 2017 season, but between the amateur draft in June and recent trades, the Tigers have acquired several new talented players. Their farm system actually has a little bit of depth now — I know, right? — which should make for an interesting set of rankings.
Given that the major league club doesn’t have much to play for over the next couple months, we thought we would shift our focus a little bit.
We want you to rank the Tigers’ prospects!
Two years ago, we did this with individual polls in each post. Thanks to a suggestion from our friends at Purple Row, we’re changing that to one large free-for-all in the comments below. Down there, we want you to list your rankings of the Tigers’ top 20-30 prospects. Explanations are welcomed and encouraged, but a clean list of names somewhere in the comment(s) will go a long way in helping us organize everything over the next couple weeks.
The Rules:
- Your list must be at least 20 players long, and no longer than 30 names. Partial ballots will not be counted, and those with more than 30 will be chopped off after the No. 30 prospect in the system. If you are having trouble filling out your list, you can use great resources like MLB Pipeline, Baseball-Reference, The Athletic, and TigsTown (subscription required).
- Voting will be open from now until next Friday evening, August 11. Once we calculate the results, we will reveal the list over the next few days. It will go a bit quicker than our preseason list — i.e. we’ll probably list more than one player per post — because we want to wrap it up before the end of August when everyone really checks out on this Tigers season.
- Players are eligible for inclusion if they still retain their rookie status through August 1. There shouldn’t be many close cases, but anyone in question needs to have fewer than 50 innings pitched, fewer than 130 plate appearances, or fewer than 45 days on the active MLB roster.
The rest of the rules are courtesy of our friends at Purple Row (with a few minor edits).
Scoring will be in done like the AP poll in college football -- that is, a first place vote gets a player 30 points, a second place vote 29, and so forth on down to 1 point for a 30th place vote. It's important to note that until a player is named on at least one-third of all ballots cast that their vote totals will only receive partial credit (on a sliding scale which depends on the total number of ballots cast). This is to prevent individuals from manipulating the poll with "vanity" votes for marginal prospects.
All ballots are weighted equally (as long as the players on them are named on enough ballots to qualify). This list is a community ranking of Tigers prospects and we're proud of the quality of our commenter base. As a result, we ask that you put some quality effort into researching and compiling your list.
Remember, everyone has their own methodology of ranking their Tigers prospects. You may disagree with how one community member creates their rankings over your own, but it remains in your hands to maintain civil discourse when discussing said rankings. That's what makes this ranking so great.
Now, let’s see your prospect rankings!