TOWER GROVE — With the turn of the year behind us, ’tis the season for prospect rankings across the industry. Future Redbirds, the fan-fueled site that keeps tabs on the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system, has been going through its Top 20 prospect, and just this morning John Sickels’ published his Top 20+ for the Cardinals’ system. Later this week Kevin Goldstein will release his Cardinals Top 11, and within a couple weeks the Baseball America Top 10 will be released.

(Heads up: I’ll be doing a chat about the latter in a couple weeks.)

With two different Top 10s already out there, floating in this series of tubes we call the Internet, we have the opportunity to stack the Bird Land Community Top 30 we’ve been (laboriously) putting together against a couple other inside jobs. Sickels, in his entry published early this morning at Minor League Ball, writes that the Cardinals have two “A” prospects and six that are “B-” or better. You can follow the link for Sickels’ complete comments on the system, but in one section he presents:

The Cardinals system is rapidly improving. Rasmus, Wallace, and Perez all have strong impact potential, and the B/B- guys all look like useful role players at least and possibly regulars. After that you have a gigantic mass of Grade C+ prospects that are difficult to rank.

Sounds familiar.

The Cardinals have a couple tent-pole prospects holding up the entire show, and then a lot of depth to fill in for support. That’s the blueprint for how the Cardinals snagged the No. 8 spot in the Baseball America organization rankings. That’s how the reputation for the system has improved since 2005. And that’s reflected in all three of the top 10 lists at our fingertips. All three of today’s lists apparently use similar criteria, with both of the Young Guns, Jason Motte and Chris Perez, eligible and named. There appears to be a consensus Top 3, and a rather familiar top 10 from list to list:

BIRD LAND COMM … FUTURE REDBIRDS … JOHN SICKLES’ MiLB

1. OF Colby Rasmus … OF Colby Rasmus … OF Colby Rasmus

2. 3B Brett Wallace … 3B Brett Wallace … 3B Brett Wallace

3. RHP Chris Perez … RHP Chris Perez … RHP Chris Perez

4. C Bryan Anderson … C Bryan Anderson … OF Daryl Jones

5. 3B David Freese … OF Daryl Jones … RHP Jess Todd

6. RHP Jason Motte … RHP Jason Motte … OF Jon Jay

7. OF Daryl Jones … 3B David Freese … RHP Jason Motte

8. RHP Jess Todd … LHP Jaime Garcia … C Bryan Anderson

9. RHP Mitchell Boggs … RHP Jess Todd … RHP Mitchell Boggs

10. LHP Jaime Garcia … RHP Mitchell Boggs … LHP Jaime Garcia

New to Bird Land Community Top 30 poll, a St. Louis Cardinals' prospect "sleeper": RHP Deryk Hooker (Source: Flickr)

So far, so good for the Community Top 30. Dig deeper into the rankings and they start to depart from one another, but the remarkable thing that I found is so many of the names a similar. A few years ago you could line up a handful of Top 20s and Nos. 15 through 20 or so would feature a dozen different names spread around the top 30. Either the Cardinals are developing more clear and defined prospects — even if they are jumbled within the rankings, like Sickels suggests — or the media is doing a better job of educating the fanbase on who are the top prospects.

I’m going with the reason being a blend of both.

Sickels’ rankings offer up some other interesting tidbits, including Francisco Samuel ranking 18th, Adam Reifer moving all the way up to No. 13, right behind David Freese. Richard Castillo, the young pitcher folks are wondering about (and I will honor those requests), is at No. 20 and Roberto De La Cruz ranks 22nd. In the Bird Land Comm Top 30, Tyler Herron took the No. 26 spot over the weekend with 42 percent of the 330-plus votes received. We move onto the vote for No. 27 — and the final week of the poll — with a couple news names. Herron, for the record, did not crack Sickels’ Top 20, but was ranked No. 17 by Future Redbirds.

New to the poll this week is another young pitcher, one labeled a “sleeper” by Sickels and ranked No. 21 as a C+-level prospect — righthander Deryk Hooker. Also new to the poll is an old prospect, just to see where he fits into this mix: the pick, the outfielder, The Legend … Amaury Cazana Marti.

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