The beauty and the fun of prospect ranking is that everybody has their own system. There's a standard set of criteria that everybody has to consider when evaluating players and deciding where to rank them, but how they consider them and what criteria they put more weight on is what ultimately determines the differences between one person's top prospect list and another, and what sparks the conversation and debate that we all love to have about prospects.
Before we dive into the 2012-2013 edition of the AB4AR Top 30, I thought it would be a good idea to give some explanation on the system I use and why I use it. It's mainly so you the readers know why I ranked guys the way I did, but it's also partially for me. I thought I knew what I was doing last year when I took my first stab at a top 30, and it turned out that I didn't know as much as I thought I did about some players. This year, I wanted to be more thorough in my evaluation of each player, and more consistent in the way I followed my system. I spent the entire season working on these rankings, and revised them often as the season progressed based on how each player performed against my set of criteria.
I think the list I've come up with this year is much better than the first edition, and much more representative of my ranking system and the criteria I put more weight on when evaluating guys. So to give everybody an idea of my thought process and what's most important to me when ranking prospects, here's a quick explanation of my personal ranking system.
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