The team over at Prospects Live released their inaugural Top 100 Prospects list and boy was it a good one on multiple counts.

First of all, I want to point out the fact that I am not too keen on most Top 100 lists that all the top publications put out on a yearly basis. I think that they put way too much emphasis on the rankings of individual players, causing fans to become caught up in why their guy was ranked 72 when they think he should be ranked 59. Here’s a hint: there is no real difference between those two rankings.

However, this list from Prospects Live was the best lists I have seen in some time. They did a perfect job of balancing on the tight rope that is player ceilings vs. floors.

It is super hard to judge a 24 year old pitcher in Triple-A that is all but guaranteed a spot in the back end of a bad team’s rotation against a 17 year old Rookie ball shortstop that could fizzle out in Low-A or could become the next big superstar.

Some lists err on the side of high floor players, saying that if the player is going to make a Major League roster, albeit as a bench player, he has still made it much farther than what most other players can say.

Other lists are all about upside. Why rank a journeyman when you can create a list of players that all have the potential to be the next Mike Trout or Vlad Guerrero Jr?

Prospects Live did an incredible job balancing all of those things and the result is a terrific list from 1 to 100.

Another reason why I enjoyed this ranking system was because it included the highest ranking from a Cubs prospect that you are going to see for the preseason 2019 ranking season.

Nico Hoerner is the guy who got the call and while he and Miguel Amaya have seen some features at the back-end of some lists so far, Hoerner blew all those rankings away by being placed at number 55 according to Prospects Live.

They gave the shortstop a Future Value rating of 55 (on a scale from 20-80) to go along with the all important Risk Value as Low.

That low risk value is a very important component of Hoerner’s game as he comes into his first full year of professional baseball with the potential to start the season in Double-A Tennessee. That’s very rare for prospects and is indicative of his maturity and his low floor moving forward.

Nico’s 55 ranking actually puts his one slot above former Cubs farmhand Dylan Cease, a guy that has been ranked much higher according to other publications. Cease, of course, was a part of the deal that allowed the Cubs to acquire Jose Quintana from the Chicago White Sox.

Other former Cubs prospects that made the top 100 include Eloy Jimenez at 2 and Isaac Paredes at 86.