Site Announcement: Revised Prospect Scouting Scale

After much back and forth among the Scouting Staff, I am happy to announce that we are launching a revised Prospect Scouting Scale, effective immediately. The purpose of the change is to make the Scale more closely correspond to the generally accepted 20-80 scale for overall player grades used by professional scouts, major league organizations, and other talent evaluators. Here's a look at our new scale:

While the new scale is fairly analogous to the previous scale in certain areas, there are some clarifications, as well as significant changes at grades 4.5 and below.  For example, a grade "4" is now an Emergency Up and Down Player, a grade "3" is an "Org Player" who contributes at Double-A or Triple-A, and a grade "2" will be a player who struggles to advance past A-Ball.  Additionally, we added a grade "4.5" on the scale. Many professional scouts use the terminology 4Yes/4No or some other secondary indicator to differentiate between bench players and emergency players. We will be using 4.5 to make that differentiation. However, we will not be using a ".5" between other grades on the scale.

As was the case previously, an abbreviated explanation of the scale will be shown in a red box in the left-hand column of the rankings pages, and the full explanation of the Scale, with details as shown in the above image, will live on the About Us page. Additionally, we will continue using three numbers on the rankings pages: a "most likely MLB projection," a floor, and a realistic ceiling.  Note that the player rankings will not necessarily always directly correspond to the projection grades, as we will also be factoring in floor, ceiling, and risk factor into rankings.

All prospect grades on the home page have been updated in connection with the launch of the new Scale. Watch for more updates when the initial 2016 season rankings are published around April 7. We may still be in the process of tightening up grades in the coming week.

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