Beyond the Box Score

Our next set of prospect rankings features the Rays, with a few slight changes made to the way this is set up. After doing some thinking, I realized that if I'm going to be giving readers a 50% outlook on a prospect, it's not worth it. That's why I'm going to nix my 150-word scouting reports on these players. I'm doing this because during the season I compile numerous amount of full scouting reports. Say, reports with tool grades and much more in-depth analysis and, again, there are certain players I haven't yet seen. Also, I don't want to shy away from the focus of these rankings, which is impact and roles going forward. But I'll still be ranking each team. So here we go...

• Tier 1 (4 points): Major League Star -- Number One Starter
• Tier 2 (3 points): Stand Out/Above Average Regular -- Number Two/Exceptional Three Starter
• Tier 3 (2 points): Solid, Average, Every Day Regular -- Number Three/Solid Four Starter
• Tier 4 (1 point): Bench/Below Average Regular -- Borderline Four/Number Five Starter/Relief Pitcher

With an assortment of high impact prospects the Rays easily contend for the best system in baseball. The Rays org is embedded with all sorts of talent and quite frankly, it seems to improve each year. That said, the impact level of the prospects might not be as high as the quantity of "decent" prospects. As you can see below, all fifteen players listed have been touted in some sort of way to have their prospect status highlighted, but the level of high impact might only be found in the first several, rather than the entirety. Meaning, such a good system would suggest that at least two or three of the prospects are 1st tier talents. That isn't the case here.

Rays -- 31 points

1st Tier:

Matt Moore

2nd Tier:

Hak-Ju Lee
Chris Archer
Taylor Guerreri
Enry Romero
Drew Vettleson

3rd Tier:

Alex Colome
Mike Mahtook
Tim Beckham
Alex Torres
Josh Sale
Derek Dietrich