By the time publications do their end of the year rankings, will Luis Robert be the #1 prospect in baseball?

I think he should be, assuming he keeps this pace up? He has put up incredible numbers at every level. He can hit, run, and play defense at an extremely high level. He has a chance to be one of the all-around best players in the game when he gets to the Major League level, imo.

Possibly.  I think the only 2 reasons he may not be would be his age (will be 22 soon) and his durability (not sure how much publications take this into account).  You do have Wander Franco as an 18 year old enjoying A+ quite a bit.

I think Wander Franco will not be unseated so long as he is in the minors and with good reason, but Robert to me is a clear cut #2. But of the arguments, I'm okay with the tossup aspect of Luis Robert v. Jo Adell. Adell has been probably the closest competitor in performance, and has an age factor. That said, I think Robert has an edge in baserunning and defense, but I can't say for sure having not seen Adell, but it's been an important part of his game.

Now BA has him 3rd currently, MLB Pipeline 5. Fangraphs has not moved him from 20s, but, like at some point you gotta move Royce Lewis down right? 

So this is baseball america's top ten, really hard for me to argue against honestly. I think BA has really responded to their overvaluing of college pitching recently and has been much more interesting to me than others (specifically, fangraphs has really sunk in my eyes, as they have become much less transparent and more dickish than they used to). 

BA top ten

1. Wander Franco

2. Jo Adell

3. Luis Robert

4. Mackenzie Gore

5. Adley Rutschman

6. Bo Bichette

7. Casey Mize

8. Forrest Whitley

9. Yordan Alvarez

10. Gavin Lux

 

While Adell has the more advanced approach, he doesn't come close to Robert's power. I wouldn't trade Robert for Adell.

5 minutes ago, bmags said:

So this is baseball america's top ten, really hard for me to argue against honestly. I think BA has really responded to their overvaluing of college pitching recently and has been much more interesting to me than others (specifically, fangraphs has really sunk in my eyes, as they have become much less transparent and more dickish than they used to). 

BA top ten

1. Wander Franco

2. Jo Adell

3. Luis Robert

4. Mackenzie Gore

5. Adley Rutschman

6. Bo Bichette

7. Casey Mize

8. Forrest Whitley

9. Yordan Alvarez

10. Gavin Lux

 

Fangraphs have never made any sense at all to me. Pretty sure they had Burdi in the 70s at some point.

A dude named Kiley never made any sense to me.

If Robert had shown better plate discipline and more track record for success, he’d be in consideration. Right now it’s pretty much unanimous Franco is #1.

I think it's nice to have another viewpoint when it comes to prospects, especially one that doesn't have anything behind a paywall, but the FanGraphs rankings are just two guys. I think they like to see people in person, which makes perfect sense, but also leaves them with obvious biases for people they can see more easily. Eric saw Robert a lot last year and I think they're just stuck with that impression of him despite the fact that he might have the best set of tools in the minors and has to be the front-runner for Minor League Player of the Year this year.

They try to cover the draft, international signings, and the team rankings and have just too small of a staff to be able to get eyes on everyone.

5 hours ago, thxfrthmmrs said:

If Robert had shown better plate discipline and more track record for success, he’d be in consideration. Right now it’s pretty much unanimous Franco is #1.

Yeah, there’s a fairly massive gap in k/bb ratios between Robert and Franco that makes it a pretty easy decision. 

Just to play devil‘s advocate: There are plenty of guys who dominated A ball only to end up with rather pedestrian numbers in the upper minors.

I guess if you squint Lewis Brinson's age 21 season that spanned A+, AA, and AAA is fairly comparable to Robert's season this year. The main difference being that Brinson spent the majority of his season A+.

26 minutes ago, GermanSoxFan said:

Just to play devil‘s advocate: There are plenty of guys who dominated A ball only to end up with rather pedestrian numbers in the upper minors.

At 18 in A+ I’d be surprised 

Franco is 4 months older than DJ Gladney and is slashing .342/.422/.534 in A+ with nearly 3 times as many walks as strikeouts. He's really good lol.

He should be, but there seems to be "politics" with those lists, especially with Baseball America's list.  I just tend to focus on whether the Sox have a lot of good players in the pipeline.