MLB Draft 2021: Consensus Rankings

Returning to an annual personal tradition I’ve held to since the 2014 draft, typically published at CtPG or at the old Halos Heaven website, here are this year’s “Consensus Draft Rankings”. This is my way of memorializing the “wisdom of crowds” among various scouts, scouting publications and prospect analysts going into the MLB Draft, and a way of providing a crib sheet to identify the next “best player available” (BPA) as the names are announced at the podium beginning 4pm Pacific, Sunday night.

Those who have followed my Draft commentary over the past decade know that I actually put little stock in “BPA”. If BPA was a science, and there was anything like true consensus among talent evaluators, one could create software that essentially does what I do here, and we could simply automate the draft. But there is no consensus – organizations have different models for evaluating risk, value and potential impact. Moreover, different teams have different developmental strengths, and a player fit for one system may not be for another. Think of how Cleveland develops pitchers; think of how the Angels develop (or don’t) prep athletes.

In short, there are tiers of talent and tiers of risk, and the best question you can answer is: “Given the top tier of players still on the board, given our organization’s needs and development tendencies, who of those left has the best chance to succeed in our system”? These Consensus Draft Rankings hopefully help answer part of that question.

A quick illustration of how difficult that assessment really is though! Since the 2017 (Adell/Canning) MLB Draft, only three players drafted from that class have made it to the MLB and put up 2+ bWAR. Only three! And of those three, they certainly must have been top-ten draft picks, reflective of the general consensus around “best player available” at the time? Well, nope. They are picks #13 (Trevor Rogers, 3.2 bWAR), #47 (Griffin Canning, 2.6 bWAR) and #282 (James Karinchak, 2.6 bWAR). 14 of the top 20 picks have no or negative WAR, and while some of that is due to age and the disruptions of the pandemic, that draft is four years in the rearview mirror, and the average college draftee matriculates in 2-3 years. So BPA? If it exists, no one knows how to do the math to get to it. It’s the new philosopher’s stone.

But here’s something close – your own fool’s gold, and like so many things on the Internets, it’s free! I’ve created a weighted average from 16 of the best talent rankings and mock drafts available, current up through yesterday. All the major scouting publications are represented along with the names you know from Fangraphs, Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, ESPN, the Athletic, BP, Prospects Live et al. My list ran to about 150, and I excluded names that didn’t appear on at least 4 top 100 lists. Here I include 80+ names, so folks can follow until the Angels select their third rounder at selection #80, on Monday afternoon.

As always, this is neither a prediction nor a mock draft – it’s a snapshot of what the experts might stack rank the available talent if forced to do so by committee. Have fun!