The Rankings Audit: How Good Are Mainstream Prospect Rankings Really?

We look back on Fangraphs, Baseball America, and MLB Pipeline rankings between 2017-2021 and discuss how they compare, what they do well, and what they miss

Introduction

Prospect rankings are ubiquitous. Evaluations of how well the big forecasters actually do? Less common to non-existent.

We’re here to change that. In this article, we look at how good three major rankers–Baseball America, Fangraphs, and MLB Pipeline– are at identifying the stars of tomorrow. This is the perfect project for us at Oyster, since…