As we did last year, we're giving the Rotten Tomatoes treatment to Reds' prospect rankings and placing that alongside our own crowd-sourced Community Prospect Rankings for your consideration. This enables us to see every instance where the experts are wrong so that you can begin your fevered letter-writing campaign. Or, more charitably, it gives us a fuller picture of where each young player stands entering the 2012 season.

The rankings that were averaged below were those of John Sickels, Kevin Goldstein (at BPro) and Baseball America. Each set of expert picks values different attributes in prospects, as does the Red Reporter readership, but at the very least this list should give credit to prospects with both high ceilings AND major-league-readiness, while smoothing out some of the disagreement.

Thanks to BK and 'creds for their hard work and dutiful chest compressions on the CPR. The system may need a little pulmonary resuscitation, but still boasts a number of very high upside prospects at premium positions whose ETAs will come due within the next few seasons. Add that to the three first/supplemental round picks the Reds will have in June and high hopes for Mr. Stephenson and several other savvy picks from the 2011 draft and I'd say the farm is far from gutted.

A few notes:

Devin Mesoraco wasn't a consensus #1, but he's as close as possible (3 of 4 #1s to go with a #2 from BPro). Along with his 1st round pedigree, high minors performance and depth of professional experience, there's no reason he shouldn't be roughly splitting time with Hanigan to start 2012.

The response to Daniel Corcino was pretty coherent too. Until we see Stephenson in action and Cingrani moving forward as a starter, he's at the head of the starting pitching class.



Most divisive prospects: Neftali Soto - Top 5 for us, but didn't crack the Top 10 for Sickels; Tony Cingrani - who Sickels is very high on and thinks could be a #3 starter, while BPro puts him in the middle of the pack with a reliever ceiling; JC Sulbaran, who BPro loves unrequited; Denis Phipps; Kyle Lotzkar; Juan Duran; Gabriel Rosa



Neftali Soto - Top 5 for us, but didn't crack the Top 10 for Sickels; Tony Cingrani - who Sickels is very high on and thinks could be a #3 starter, while BPro puts him in the middle of the pack with a reliever ceiling; JC Sulbaran, who BPro loves unrequited; Denis Phipps; Kyle Lotzkar; Juan Duran; Gabriel Rosa Biggest gaps between Red Reporter and "the experts": Neftali Soto, Denis Phipps, Juan Duran, Gabriel Rosa, Ryan Wright



** "999" = unranked

Click header to sort table by column Prospect CPR

BA

BPro Sickels Experts' avg.

All 4 avg.

Devin Mesoraco

1 1 2 1 1.33 1.25 Zack Cozart

2 3 3 5 3.67 3.25 Billy Hamilton

3

2

1

2

1.67 2.00 Daniel Corcino

4

4

5

3

4.00

4.00

Neftali Soto

5

8

9

11

9.33

8.25

Robert Stephenson

6 5 4 4 4.33 4.75 Yorman Rodriguez

7 14 11 9 11.33 10.25 Todd Frazier

8

7

8

8

7.67

7.83

Henry Rodriguez

9

13

10 10 11.00 10.5 Didi Gregorius

10 6 7 7 6.67 7.5

Tony Cingrani

11

11

16

6

11.00

11.00

JC Sulbaran

12 9 6 12 9.00 9.75 Denis Phipps

13 999 999 20 21.33 19.25 Kyle Lotzkar

14 25 12 15 17.33 20.67 David Vidal

15 21 999 13 19.00 17.75 Juan Duran

16 28 19 999 20.67 19.5

Tucker Barnhart

17 25 18 18 19 18.5 Donald Lutz

18 999

999

999 22.0 21.0 Amir Garrett

19 18 999 999 20.67

20.25 Ryan LaMarre

20 999 17 999 20.33 20.50 Chris Manno

21 999 999 999 22.00 21.75 Gabriel Rosa

22 15 15 17 15.67 17.25 Junior Arias

23 999 999 19 21 21.50 Josh Smith

24 999 999 999 22.00 21.75 Sean Buckley

25 19 999 999 21.00 21.00 Ryan Wright

999 18 20 999 20.00 20.50

Single listers:

Tim Crabbe (Sickels #14)

Chris Valaika (BA #16)

Donnie Joseph (BA #22)

Jonathan Perez (BA #24)

Donald Lutz(RR #18)

Chris Manno (RR #21)

Josh Smith (RR #24)

#

Methods, inspired by JinAZ: I just averaged the rank of each prospect across the three evaluators for the "experts avg." I added the CPR and averaged all four rankings for the "All 4 avg." To avoid too much torpedo effect, if a guy was not ranked in a list, I assigned him the rank of 22 for composting purposes and if he appeared below 20 in the BA or RR list, I assigned a 21.

