Yankees prospects: The 2015 unified prospect list

This might be a little late, but now that all the major prospect lists have come out we can put them all together and see how the Yankees top 10 ranks universally. In order to compile a definitive list, I took the lists that Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law (ESPN), Fangraphs, Minor League Ball, and MLB.com provided and lined them up to show you how they compare:

Keith Law was the only one who didn't think Luis Severino was a top-two prospect, while Gary Sanchez, Rob Refsnyder, and Jorge Mateo jumped around quite a bit. Leonardo Molina, Miguel Andujar, Domingo German, and John Ryan Murphy all made cameos, but none were included on enough lists to make the cut.

To create an aggregate group, I gave each prospect ranking a numerical value so that the higher ranked a prospect was, the less points they accumulated and the 10 prospects with the lowest point values became the unified prospect list, a list that will hopefully give a definitive view of the top 10 prospects in the Yankees system. Any time a prospect failed to appear on a list I penalized them with extra points in order to push them further down the list.

Using this methodology, I compiled this top 10 list:

Severino and Judge technically finished in a tie, but seeing as how Severino had twice the first-place finishes as Judge, I gave him the nod, even though Law ranked him fourth on his list. Either way, Severino and Judge are clearly the top two players in the system. As maybe the best overall hitter in the system, Greg Bird ranks no. 3, while Jorge Mateo's high potential moved him into no. 4 on the list. Gary Sanchez still clings onto the top 5 as the no. 5 prospect in the system, while Ian Clarkin comes in at no. 6 overall. Refsnyder reaches no. 7, despite his defensive shortcomings and non-existence on Law's top 10. Jacob Lindgren benefits from his major league readiness to sit at no. 8 and Luis Torrens (sigh) and Eric Jagielo round out the unified list an no. 9 and 10. Given the talent in the system and who we've been talking about recently, it's easy to see this list as a definitive Yankees prospect list for the 2015 season.

As an added bonus, I'd like to show off how accurate Pinstripe Alley was when we created our own prospect list:

Putting the unified list and the PSA list side by side shows that we were almost right on the money. Everything in our list was identical to the aggregated list, other than the placement of Rob Refsnyder and Jorge Mateo. The PSA editors seem to be much higher on Refsnyder's MLB readiness than Mateo's potential, but other than that everything else lines up. I'd like to think that it shows just how reliable our ranking is, rather than to say that the mainstream rankings don't really add up to much. That's just me, though; what do you think?