MLB.com releases their Cincinnati Reds Top 30 prospects

MLB.com has slowly been working their way through the various prospect rankings that they produce each year and they finally got around to the Cincinnati Reds prospect list. They used to only go 20 prospects deep but they kicked it up a notch this year and put out a Top 30 list, which you can see here. Jonathan Mayo, one of the MLB.com prospect writers who contributed to making the list, also has an article on Reds.com that looks at some finer points from the list.

There really are no big surprises on the list outside of the fact that Raisel Iglesias isn’t listed on it, presumably because they decided he’s not eligible (Baseball Prospectus also made that decision on their Reds list). Jeremy Kivel made his highest ranking, coming in at #20 on the list. With that said, some lists didn’t go 20 deep and he may have ranked higher on some of those lists.

Here’s the list of the top tools from Jonathan Mayo:

There are a few surprises on this list, and I’d have to imagine that only players in the Top 30 are qualified to be listed in the Best Tools section. I say that because Jesse Winker is listed as the top power hitter on the list and while I believe his power is slightly better than they rate it, Juan Duran has the best power in the system. Duran is not in the Top 30 though, which leads me to believe that it’s only for the players on the list. David Holmberg being listed as having the best control is also one that jumped out as out of place. He walked 16 batters in 30 big league innings last season after walking 33 in 92.2 innings in Louisville. The rest of the best tools seem to be reasonable picks.

Go give both links a read. The Top 30 list has scouting reports on each player with breakdowns of their tools, so set aside some time to read through those if you’d like.