In some ways I have to agree with "itsinthegame". And I sure do think the advice in his last post is great. Much better than his earlier post saying to go play volleyball or ping pong (LOL) if you get a bad ranking.
Truth be known, I don't like to do rankings. Much for the reasons everyone talks about in these posts. I do think there's a giant advantage in being ranked. I don't think being unranked is a big disadvantage though. If we were right about every player listed on our top 400, which we are not, there's still yet another 200-300 that get drafted each year. There's even a much larger number going to college programs.
Here's what I don't care for. Lets say someone was to ask you what are your favorite 400 songs. Well you might be able to name 400 songs that you like, but think how hard it would be to put them in exact order of how much you liked them.
Ranking players is much the same. The first 20 or so are easy. Then the further you go down the list the more difficult it becomes. I often ask myself, "what's the difference between this player we have ranked #130 and this player we have #180"? The difference is nearly nothing, both are about the same prospect. Sometimes #180 turns out to be better than #130. Sometimes the unranked player becomes better than both.
So I have to agree that there is nothing scientific about player rankings. Everyone knows that and whether it's our rankings or The MLB Scouting Bureau's... mistakes are and always will be made.
That said, my original post referred to the comment that these rankings don't mean a thing to anyone but the player and his parents. I really don't think some people know just how important these rankings are. There have been many days when I wish they weren't so important.
I've always been half tempted to include some bad player real high in the rankings and give him a great report. While the scouting activity that follows might prove a point, the result would be unfair to the player and put us out of the ranking business. We can afford to be wrong, but we can not afford to mislead or lie to scouts and college coaches.
Our staff has lots of professional scouting and college recruiting experience. We see more top high school players than any organization in baseball. That includes the MLB clubs or the MLB Scouting Bureau. Many of these organizations are well aware of that. Scouts and coaches know the information we put out is pretty solid. Not perfect, just real good! Good enough to seriously follow up on the list.