Scout.com released their top-100 prospect ranking recently, and the usual names appear at or near the top, with the top-2 Atlanta Braves prospects falling in the top-10 overall. Tommy Hanson ranked 5th and Jason Heyward ranked 9th, with both receiving five-star grades. After that, though, it gets a little weird.
Coming in at number 15 is Julio Teheran -- the 15th best prospect in all of baseball according to Scout.com. That's 12 spots ahead of Neftali Feliz, who was ranked 27th. I don't believe we've seen Teheran on any of the other top-100 lists from Baseball America, John Sickels, Keith Law, or Kevin Goldstein, so his inclusion so high on these rankings is quite surprising (and rather odd). He's still a teenager who's thrown 15 innings of unimpressive minor league ball. Ranking him in the top-20 is just foolish and unnecessary.
Two other Braves are also listed, Cole Rohrbough is somewhat of a surprise at 75, and Jordan Schafer is almost an afterthought at 99. No mention of Freddie Freeman, Gorkys Hernandez, or Jeff Locke, who were included in several other top-prospect lists.
I was curious how they ranked the top-Braves prospects, so I went out and bought the magazine. In it they have the top-300 top-prospects, quite an undertaking. The ranking there is a bit different from the online version, with Hanson ranking 4th, and Heyward 10th. Teheran is still up there, but drops a spot to 16th, Rohrbough to 78th, and Schafer out of the top-100 to 103rd. Freddie Freeman makes a respectable appearance at number-67, but is nowhere to be found in the online version (which you think would be more up-to-date and easier to correct). The rest of the Braves fall like this: Gorkys Hernandez (140), Cody Johnson (181), Kris Medlen (223), Jeff Locke (224), Craig Kimbrel (233), and Brandon Hicks (263). Johnson is a bit of a surprise.
Bill Shanks does the Braves top-20 in the mag, and does a pretty silly job of it. He's told me in the past that he doesn't like ranking players, and it certainly shows, as he's not very good at it. I guess the individual writers weren't consulted when they did the top-100 (or 300), because Shanks' top Braves look quite different: (1) Heyward, (2) Hanson, (3) Freeman, (4) Rohrbough, (5) Schafer, (6) Teheran, and then it pretty much rounds out the top-12 with the rest of the guys who were listed in the top-300. He ranks Deunte Heath at 13, followed by Eric Campbell and James Parr -- odd choices. He finishes his top-20 with Diory Hernandez. Hardly a top prospect in the Braves organization, and a guy with little more than a utility infielder ceiling.
I think we have to move Scout.com down a notch in the credibility department. Some of their choices are just strange bordering on unserious.