Organizational Rankings: #9
Today, we launch the top ten, heading towards the top spot and closing out this series. All of the teams that we discuss this week are legitimate contenders for both this year and the future, and these are the organizations that the rest of baseball is chasing.
Rankings So Far
#30: Washington Nationals
#29: Florida Marlins
#28: Houston Astros
#27: Kansas City Royals
#26: Pittsburgh Pirates
#25: San Diego Padres
#24: Cincinnati Reds
#23: Colorado Rockies
#22: Detroit Tigers
#21: St. Louis Cardinals
#20: Toronto Blue Jays
#19: San Francisco Giants
#18: Minnesota Twins
#17: Chicago White Sox
#16: Baltimore Orioles
#15: Seattle Mariners
#14: Philadelphia Phillies
#13: Los Angeles Dodgers
#12: Texas Rangers
#11: Oakland Athletics
#10: Los Angeles Angels
#9: Arizona Diamondbacks
Ownership: C
Honestly, this one’s a bit tough to figure out. Since the D’Backs were purchased by a group of investors, they’ve trimmed payroll back from the free spending days of Jerry Colangelo and operated more like a small to mid market franchise. They haven’t spent more than $70 million on the major league roster for the last five years, though they did increase spending last year when they had a chance to contend. The ownership group has mostly kept their hands off the baseball operations department with the exception of the Eric Byrnes extension – hopefully they learned their lesson from that one. Jeff Moorad, who was the face of the ownership group, just left to run the Padres, so that adds another level of uncertainty about how the ownership group will operate going forward. I have a lot less conviction about this grade than most others.
Front Office: B
From a big picture standpoint, Josh Byrnes has done a good job of building a forward thinking organization that develops talent internally and can contend for the NL West for years to come. They’ve made their share of mistakes, and I think they had a pretty bad off-season in missing out on opportunities to take control of the NL West, but overall, they’ve shown that they have a pretty solid grasp of building rosters that can contend with limited payrolls. There’s room for improvement, but they won’t be held back by a bad management team.
Major League Talent: B
The core of young talent in place is impressive – Justin Upton, Chris Young, Stephen Drew, Chris Snyder, Conor Jackson, Brandon Webb, Dan Haren, Max Scherzer… there’s quantity and quality across multiple positions, and several of them have already been locked up at team-friendly salaries for years to come. The problem, though, is that the team lacks enough good players around that young core to help make them a championship contender right now. Eric Byrnes, Doug Davis, Jon Garland, and Felipe Lopez will earn nearly $30 million between them this year, and given that’s about 40% of the D’Backs payroll, they just aren’t getting enough bang for the buck. It leaves them as a good up and coming team that is going to need a lot to go right to be playing in October in 2009.
Minor League Talent: C
Since the system was thinned out significantly with the Dan Haren trade, picking out the top prospect here doesn’t take an expert – Jarrod Parker is a big time arm with a high ceiling and a good feel for pitching at age 20. After that, though, it gets sketchy – Daniel Schlereth has a power arm but his uspide is limited as a reliever. Gerardo Parra is long on tools and short on performance. It’s a good thing the D’Backs have a lot of young talent in the majors, because they aren’t likely to get a big infusion of help from the farm system over the next few years.
Overall: B
The D’Backs don’t have any glaring weaknesses – the ownership isn’t great but gives them just enough to contend. The front office makes mistakes, but not enough to nullify the talent on the roster. They are a few players short of a championship club, but the core of their roster isn’t going anywhere. The minor league system isn’t good, but Jarrod Parker gives them at least one impact talent to hang their hope on. Being strongish across the board, with potentially the best group of young talent in the National League, is good enough to get them in the top 10.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how 2 B’s and 2 C’s average out to a B regardless of weight…Besides that, nice article.
And we were doing so well today . . .
Questions like that would be less understandable if Dave had a link to his process. If a new reader comes in and doesn’t read all the comments he’s going to be unaware of Dave’s explanations. This person would not have seen that Dave favors GMs and ownership and gives more credit to MLB talent than farm systems, nor that he’s looking out about 5 years, for example.
He quibbles with the grade and everyone jumps on him? Yeah, that’s cool.
They also get an A for having The Eric Byrnes Show, which props up the final average
YOU DUMBSHITS, HE EVEN SAID HE MIGHT BE MISSING SOMETHING AND HE LIKED THE ARTICLE!!!!
I can’t get over all the minuses for this comment, what are you guys a bunch of sycophants? And for the record, I bet any college student would love to get 2 Bs and 2 Cs and escape the semester with a 3.0. I don’t disagree with an overall ranking of a B, for the D-Backs, but they’re major league talent’s a bit better than a “B” the best 1-2 punch in baseball…combined with a top flight SS, one of the best young OFs in baseball, a good catcher…I’d say that’s a bit better than a B+. Or grade the ownership as “incomplete” something, but that has to be fixed…he has a point.
I’m a college student and I would give a couple fingers to escape this semester with 2 B’s and 2 c’s, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t average out to a 3.0.
Hello Tom,
The overall grade is not based on an average of the four sections as they are not weighed equally.
Well yes, but that still doesn’t matter. His point stands that regardless of the weighting 2 B’s and 2 C’s can’t average out to a B. Unless the ownership and minor league system weights are insignificant. But from the rankings of the Marlins, for example, we know the ownership rank is very significant. Thus, it would appear Dave’s subjective weightings of each category change pretty dramatically from club to club. Which is of course going to draw a lot of criticism from an analytically and statistically inclined crowd. If I presented such a process in my field I would get lambasted….. Of course this is just baseball, so its never going to be that bad, but people are going to wonder.