2013 Boston Red Sox Top 16 Prospects

After seeing their farm system, once seen as a precious commodity, decline in recent years, Boston’s prospect pool is starting to rebound. Through the draft and trades, the Red Sox have accumulated a nice blend of young position players and pitchers, who populate every level of their system. Although the team lacks the type of top-end talent of some teams, they are incredibly deep with players whose ceilings are potentially high but still unclear. It appears that some of these prospects could start debuting at Fenway as soon as this season, so fans will start getting an opportunity to see the kind of talent Boston really has. –Andrew Martin

Below are our top 16 prospects with 2013 opening day age, position, and comments on each player. Below the top 16 is a small list of additional notable names. Enjoy.

AL East Players To Watch

Dan Marino is trekking through each division in the major leagues and giving you one player he thinks is the: Rookie to Watch, Breakthrough Player, The Party’s Over, Non-Roster Invitee Most Likely to Stick, and Just Not Seeing it.

In part one of six he brings you the American League East:

2012 Boston Red Sox Top 16 Prospects

The Boston Red Sox prospects were possibly the toughest team for me to rank. They are a very deep system with most of its high-ceiling talent in the lower levels and some lower-ceiling prospects in the high levels but higher probability.

In all honesty, I feel unsettled with the current ranking I gave this system. I feel that the top 8 or so prospects can be switched around so much with out much fault being thrown around. That is a testament to how deep this system is.

My biggest problem is that I tend to lend a higher hand to probability over ceiling but some of the guys in this organization have ceilings that simply excite me. Probability took the advantage in some cases that I’m not sure if I shouldn’t have gone with my gut in (Lavarnway vs. Swihart) but I really need to see more about some of the lower level guys, no matter how much I like them.

Below are my top 16 prospects with 2012 opening day age, position, and comments on each player. Below the top 16 is a small list of additional notable names. Enjoy.