There are a lot of websites out there that rank prospects. And they’re all a lot better at it and spend a lot more time researching these things than anyone here does. But every list is different. After all, there’s a lot of subjectivity and plenty of unknowns when it comes to evaluating prospects.

So I had an idea: What if there was a consensus Top 30 Prospects list? One that took the Top 30 rankings from Baseball America, FanGraphs, and MLB Pipeline and averaged them together to create a true “consensus” prospect ranking.

So that’s what we did.

Today, we’re introducing the NS9 Top 30 Pirates Prospect Rankings, which is entirely a composite ranking of the most popular Top 30 lists across the industry. The goal is to give you an average ranking for each player and a better idea of where they stack up against their peers.

A couple of things here:

First, this list will be updated monthly. Players will move in, players will move out, players will move up, and players will move down based on how these prospect analysts rank them.

Second, each month I’ll highlight the movement within the Top 30 and point out anything worth discussing.

Third, MLB Pipeline has not yet ranked the new draft picks in its Top 30 list. So for the players who are new to the system through the draft, their composite ranking currently consists only of Baseball America and FanGraphs. That will be updated once Pipeline updates its list.

And fourth, if you have a problem with where anyone is ranked here, don’t blame me. This is literally just an average of what everyone else says.

Anyways, prospect lists are fun, they spark debate, and they allow us to dream (or doom) about the future.

Check out the first installment of our Top 30 list and tell us who you’re excited about, who is overrated, and who isn’t getting the credit they deserve.