How many top-ranked prospects on the Dodger 40-man roster

For over a decade, my baseball annual tradition was for me to buy the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. My earliest copy is the 2005 book and I currently have every volume since 2010.

These permanent snapshots of 900 prospects are something that I go back to when I want to see what the industry thought about these players at those times.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the 2014 handbook and I noticed the Dodgers Top 30 list included Joc Pederson at No. 1, Corey Seager and Julio Urías followed at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively.

After those top three, current Dodgers on the 40-man roster on that list include Ross Stripling (10th), Cody Bellinger (14th), Pedro Baez (19th) and Victor Gonzalez (20th).

But those were not the only Dodgers in that book. Max Muncy was No. 7 on Athletics Top 30 and Chris Taylor was No. 9 on the Mariners list.

After seeing that, I wondered how many Dodgers on the 40-man roster had been ranked on their team’s Top 30 list at any point in their prospect career.

By using Baseball America’s website’s search function (subscription needed to see rankings) as well as the 14 prospect handbooks I have in my collection, I was able to figure that out.

On the table below, I listed each player’s best ranking on the their team’s Top 30 and their best ranking (if applicable) on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect List.

Some highlights on the Dodgers rankings

37 of the 40 players had been ranked at some point during their careers. How does this compare to other teams. Well the current Yankee 40-man roster has four players who were not ranked on either their team or Top 100 rankings. And the Astros have seven players on their roster who were never ranked.

Also, the Dodgers have seven of their No. 1 prospects on their 40-man roster plus David Price and Jimmy Nelson who were No. 1 prospects on the Rays and Brewers lists respectively. Meanwhile the Astros have one homegrown No. 1 prospect, Carlos Correa, on their 40-man roster. He, along with Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke, are the three No. 1 prospects on the Astros current team.

So have you figured out yet who the three players are who were never ranked on the Dodgers 40-man roster? They are left-handed pitchers Adam Kolarek and Scott Alexander and free-agent-to-be Kiké Hernández.

Both Kolarek and Alexander were pretty much relievers early on in their professional careers and without big strikeout numbers, they would not get much notice on the prospect front. And Hernández really blossomed as a major league player without really having big years in his early professional career.

You don’t have to be a highly ranked prospect to be successful

While the Dodgers have had their share of high prospect rankings, some of their most successful players never were big-time prospects.

Some like Justin Turner, would not advance out of the lowest part of the lists before completely falling off.

Turner was ranked 29th on the Reds Top 30 Prospect List after his second professional season in 2007. Turner would follow that year finishing 28th on the Orioles list. However after the 2008 season, Turner would never again be ranked on a Top 30 prospect list.

Mookie Betts was ranked 31st on the Red Sox prospect list after his 2012 season. He had zero home runs in 255 professional at bats. Betts would have a banner 2013 season, in 460+ plate appearances over two levels, he hit .314/.417/.506, had 55 extra-base hits and stole 38 bases in 42 attempts.

For all of that, Betts would move to No. 7 on the Red Sox list entering the 2014 season. That would be the last time Betts would be ranked because as he continued to put up big numbers, .346/.431/.529 in 464 plate appearances between AA and AAA in 2014, he also debuted in Boston in June 2014 and he would gather enough MLB at-bats to no longer be a prospect.