Post-2018 Farm System Rankings
Today, I’ve published a pair of posts in which I attempt to estimate the present-day value of prospects, both in terms of WAR and dollars. With that work complete, the logical next step is to turn away from the value of specific prospects and towards farm systems as a whole.
One can get a sense of the stronger and weaker systems just by eyeballing the rankings produced by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel. What the prospect-valuation data allows us to do, however, is to place a figure on baseball’s top-800 or so prospects, creating a more objective ranking based on the grades assessed to each player here at FanGraphs.
These rankings provide a current snapshot of the farm systems before Longenhagen and McDaniel embark on their winter-long reveal of team prospect rankings. (The first post in their offseason series will appear this week.) As noted, the methodology for valuing prospects based on their grades is explained in my last two posts on the subjects:
Keep in mind, these values are based on the current CBA, where players receive a minimum salary for roughly three years and then have three (or four) years of arbitration before reaching free agency after six full MLB seasons. Players are generally underpaid compared to their value on the field during these seasons, which is what creates the high present-day values and partially justifies the high value placed by teams on prospects when executing trades.
These values are also based on an approximate $9 million per WAR that MLB teams pay players in free agency. The actual cost per win when all players are considered is closer to half that figure. Prior to free agency, however, salaries are artificially depressed, so comparing value when players are freely available to all teams provides a better benchmark for determining actual value. The overall dollar-per-win mark varies depending on the study, so my own estimate might be considered too high or low. Teams have different budgets that requires different valuations on a team-by-team basis, but looking at a figure close to the overall average allows for good comparisons — not only with the farm systems below, but with comparing value in potential trades, like this one with J.T. Realmuto, or in actual trades like the one involving Chris Archer last season.
The table below indicates the number of players each team has at each grade level from 40 (where there are nearly 500 players) all the way up to 70, where Vlad Guerrero Jr. sits all alone. The individual values for all of these players are then added up to provide one single total.
Here is that table:
| Team | 70 | 65 | 60 | 55 | 50 | 45 | 40 | Total Prospects | Present-Day WAR | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SDP | 1 | 4 | 7 | 8 | 26 | 46 | 50.9 | $458 M | ||
| ATL | 1 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 13 | 27 | 45.0 | $405 M | ||
| CHW | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 15 | 28 | 41.0 | $369 M | |
| TBR | 2 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 17 | 36 | 39.6 | $356 M | ||
| TOR | 1 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 20 | 32 | 33.1 | $298 M | ||
| CIN | 2 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 7 | 22 | 28.4 | $256 M | ||
| MIN | 2 | 3 | 7 | 24 | 36 | 28.2 | $254 M | |||
| DET | 3 | 4 | 10 | 14 | 31 | 27.8 | $250 M | |||
| HOU | 2 | 2 | 3 | 21 | 28 | 23.5 | $212 M | |||
| LAD | 2 | 3 | 6 | 13 | 24 | 23.1 | $208 M | |||
| PIT | 2 | 3 | 5 | 14 | 24 | 22.4 | $202 M | |||
| LAA | 1 | 3 | 7 | 11 | 22 | 19.7 | $177 M | |||
| PHI | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 18 | 26 | 19.7 | $177 M | ||
| OAK | 2 | 1 | 9 | 11 | 23 | 19.5 | $176 M | |||
| TEX | 1 | 4 | 4 | 26 | 35 | 19.0 | $171 M | |||
| CLE | 4 | 8 | 15 | 27 | 18.5 | $167 M | ||||
| NYM | 1 | 4 | 3 | 15 | 23 | 17.8 | $160 M | |||
| WSN | 1 | 1 | 4 | 11 | 17 | 17.8 | $160 M | |||
| STL | 1 | 2 | 6 | 20 | 29 | 16.1 | $145 M | |||
| MIA | 5 | 7 | 14 | 26 | 16.0 | $144 M | ||||
| NYY | 3 | 6 | 22 | 31 | 16.0 | $144 M | ||||
| MIL | 1 | 2 | 4 | 14 | 21 | 15.0 | $135 M | |||
| COL | 1 | 1 | 8 | 16 | 26 | 14.5 | $131 M | |||
| SFG | 2 | 4 | 17 | 23 | 10.6 | $95 M | ||||
| CHC | 3 | 6 | 18 | 27 | 10.4 | $94 M | ||||
| ARI | 2 | 3 | 18 | 23 | 10.0 | $90 M | ||||
| KCR | 1 | 6 | 18 | 25 | 9.1 | $82 M | ||||
| BAL | 7 | 24 | 31 | 8.5 | $77 M | |||||
| BOS | 7 | 13 | 20 | 6.1 | $55 M | |||||
| SEA | 4 | 13 | 17 | 4.8 | $43 M |
The Padres have amassed a large number of prospects at nearly every grade level and feature an incredible amount of depth. When looking at that 50.9 WAR, consider this thought experiment: would you rather have the current Cleveland roster for 2019 with every player becoming a free agent at the end of next season or would you rather have the Padres farm system? If you choose the major-league team, you essentially end up with an expansion team in 2020 without the benefit of an expansion draft, and you likely end up terrible for years. Choose the latter and you presumably have a bright future, though the outlook for 2019 isn’t so good. Maybe it is an easy choice given the opportunity to win this season, but it’s a hypothetical for purposes of assessing value without real-world constraints.
It’s worth noting that the Blue Jays would be more middle of the road than top-five if Vlad Jr. had been called up at the All-Star break. If the Braves hadn’t called up Ronald Acuña, they would have the best farm system in baseball right now. They’d also have won fewer games and maybe missed the playoffs. Winning games and making the playoffs is more important than farm-system rankings, and the latter doesn’t account for young players in the majors or the overall health and strength of a farm system. That said, Boston and Seattle look pretty barren when it comes to prospects. For a look at all of the individual prospects, look to THE BOARD and the FanGraphs Prospects page.
For those more visually inclined, here are the farm rankings by WAR in graph form.
And here are those same rankings in terms of free-agent dollars.
Enjoy!
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
The prospect content today has been fantastic. Thank you!
Lines up pretty well with consensus. The point about call ups affecting the system is important; teams like the Brewers, A’s, and Yankees don’t look so hot here, but their major league team is loaded with young talent.
While this is true, the true ideal is to be very strong at both levels. I.E. the Ray’s, 90 win team mainly due to young players and a strong farm. It’s pretty amazing what they’ve done. Just clearly the most long term thinking team in baseball. Just move them to a new city and book the dynasty.
or realign and make them a part of the “AL South” or whatever. The AL East is unfair.
Unfair? Maybe. At this snapshot in time, maybe. But for the 4 years 2013-16 the Yankees averaged just 85 wins. And from 2012-15 the Sawx finished dead last three times. (Of course, unless Cherington comes back they’re not finishing last anymore.)
The East is a beast right now, but it hasn’t always and won’t always be like that. Love what the Rays are doing, and I’d say there’s no real reason they can’t win 95-97 games, i.e., contend for the division, by 2020.
This methodology — with the arb salary subtraction factor — actually seems like it could add in young MLB talent smoothly, doesn’t it?
Craigs Edwards is a legend. Really great work!
Awesome, thank you!
Great work, Orioles!
They were due to not be in last place somewhere.
As a O I find the last word of the piece on the cheeky side 🙁
Love it! As if it wasn’t obvious, this paints the Royals and Orioles situations in an even worse light.
They waited too long to trade Machado, Schoop, and Britton and should have moved Givens as well.
One thing I wasn’t expecting: The Tigers. They do really well here, and it seems like it’s because of their FV45-55 prospects. In this system, FV55s aren’t that much different than FV65s, and so having a bunch of them matter.
I have been saying all year that the Tigers have an underrated system. They got good value in the JV and Leonys Martin deals and committed highway robbery with the Justin Wilson trade. They have another high draft pick next year as well.
Man, I knew the Royals didn’t have much, but I didn’t realize they were with Baltimore/Seattle/Boston as worst in baseball level of depletion. That is not going to be a pretty rebuild. The rest of their division is so far ahead of them. Yikes.
They didn’t time their tear-down correctly (one can argue they didn’t time it at all, it just *happened*) and they’ve done a horrible job at drafting the past several years. Personally, if I were ownership, I would be looking for a new GM.
They got their title at least. Poor Mariners and O’s didn’t. And hard to feel bad about the Sox situation lol
Yep, the Red Sox did it to themselves deliberately, and got what they were trying for. As a Sox fan, I expect no sympathy, and I expect the eventual rebuild to be painful. Flags fly forever, the reason you build a strong farm is so you can win in the future. For the Red Sox, the future they built for was 2018.
I agree with you (as a Sox fan), but I do wish that they had perhaps considered some more creative solutions to some of the championship-building questions. The Dodgers are coming to the tail end of a contention window with their current core… except their farm system looks like a team getting ready to open up a new contention window. IMO, *that* is the real story of these rankings.
That’s the double bonus of a big payroll, you don’t need to continually tap the farm system and can make window setup trades.
The Sox are probably going to be the most up-and-down team of the 2010s.
The main team is young enough they should have time to either keep firing and also have a shot at restocking.
Poor Mariners didn’t even get to the playoffs. I hope they can turn it around soon, but I am not that hopeful for their fans.
This is going to really depend on what you think of their last draft, where they picked up a whole bunch of advanced college arms. Kiley/Eric have them all slotted in as FV45s. The next few years are going to be ugly, but you could see them returning to being an adequate baseball team in 2021, with some upside if they select well at the top of the draft in the next 3 years.
Besides those rather thin silver linings, it’s going to be bad. Could be worse…it could be the Orioles.
College arms are not usually sky high prospect type players, though. They are typically better as projectable guys who slot in well on teams that want reinforcements relatively fast. I was very confused why the Royals targeted so many.
I’m not saying the Royals system is good but I think it gets dinged a fair amount due to how young most of its top guys are. As Kiley/Eric explained in another post they do tend to adjust FV downward based on how far a guy is away from MLB and 4 of the royals top 5 prospects were all teenagers until a couple months ago.
Again, not saying its good but it might not be as bad as it looks here.
Just happy the Angels aren’t last, and that our previous GM moved to Seattle.
Idk, keep adell, canning and anyone under 19. Move the rest for upgrades is pretty much where I’d be with that team too. You need to surround trout and those are the only pieces that can help next year. The rest preserves the farm for future years.
If you add in players under control in MLB, Atlanta looks ridiculously strong.
Or Tampa, who’s entire team other than KK is pre-arb or arb for 2 years… then 2 players need to be signed, heh.
Well they’ll also trade most of them away so that they can be 2 years away from contending with a really strong farm and low payroll again.
I wish Sternberg would sell the Rays to someone who will treat the team like a source of pride and fulfillment and not merely as an investment.
Would it be possible to show a waterfall chart adding pre arb, arb, FA signings, etc?
BOS looks pretty bad here, but their ML club is young and talented. I’d be interesting to see who has long term cumulative value
> I’d be interesting to see who has long term cumulative value
NYY would dominate that kind of comparison, with HOU coming in right behind them. BOS would do well, of course, but the silly amount of pre-arb talent on the Yankees is hard to top. Just think about Judge + Sanchez + Severino + Torreyes + Andujar and remember that *all* of them are pre-arb.
Boston’s core is amazing, but most of them are getting very very expensive now, and a lot of them are about to walk (most notably Sale and Bogaerts). They’ve got one more year of awesome before the reckoning begins.
One more year of awesome works.
Per Cots, the payroll committed in 2020 is $92M, which suggests that the window isn’t closed quite yet. Admittedly, the farm has gone the traditional Dombrowski way — but this time DD has actually made a profit on the thing.
DD is known for destroying farm systems, but this isn’t the first time he’s made it work.
Alas, my poor Mariners will suck forever……..
Yeah, and they hope to be competitive in 2021. I got news for Dipoto, having the worst farm in baseball isn’t going to make them a WS contender in 2021, no matter how much he retools us.
You have 8 45 FV prospects listed for CLE but they have 9 according to the board
Obviously having a guy like Vladdy Jr is a huge coup but damn does Toronto’s system drop off fast. That’s not super encouraging for a team that looks like its in need of quite a few pieces.
As a Red Sox fan, allow me to just say, “Wow — glad we won this year!” Dave Dombrowski did what he does, trading future value for current value, and it worked, so all Red Sox fans should be quite happy about that. But in a couple of years, the outlook might be rather bleak.
I get what you mean, it sucks that we’ve had pretty poor drafts since he got here, which compound the issues created by excessive win-now trades. That said, teams like the Red Sox with front offices and ownership who are invested in the team’s success and also are realistic won’t just let the outlook get “bleak”. If there’s a lost season in next couple years, they’ll do what other smart teams do and sell off the pieces that will set them up for the shortest rebuild. They certainly expect this window to be longer than a couple years, given the JD and Price contracts, but hopefully they won’t let dead money prevent them from getting huge value for a half season of Benintendi in 2021 or whenever, especially since they did get the one ring – and hopefully more!
The Padres have a great system but if I had to choose I would prefer more elite talent than depth. I know he isn’t a prospect any more but how many of those 40 grade lotto tickets would you be willing to trade for Acuna?
Dude, they literally have Tatis 2nd in their rankings. Plus another 3 in the top 25 or so.
would be interesting to see what percentage of prospects grades are whiffed on doing a look back anlalysis. These are still opinions. I would guess its around 15%-20%. I can think of several just going thru the rosters from championship series. ie jose altuve, justin turner, jd martinez, pedroira. none of these guys were top 100 guys when they debuted and now they’re arguable the best players.
The Cards farm system is below average? They’ll proceed to churn out 4-5 above average big leaguers a year. It’s like a factory.
Prospect grades don’t account for strengths and weaknesses in player development and coaching. It would be very interesting to see an article about how good each team is at turning non-prospects into productive major leaguers. I would guess that the Cardinals, Dodgers, and Indians would all do well.
Baltimore is doomed.
This is an opportunity to go back over the past few years and see if anything can be discovered about the value of farm systems and how to use these prospects. In 2015 the Red Sox had just completed two very unsatisfactory seasons at the bottom of the AL East. At the same time they possessed the top ranked farm system in the game. How Dave Dombrowski used those prospects led to this years championship and he must be given a huge amount of credit. In 2015 the Sox were contending and there was a large kerfuffle yelling for the Sox to get Cole Hamels, the price was Mookie Betts. Just as in 2004 when Dombrowski made the franchise changing trade with the Marlins, he recognized talent and sent Cameron Maybin, not Justin Verlander to the Marlins for Miguel Cabrera. He deserves tremendous accolades for his mid-season additions as well. No GM came close to adding the value that Eovaldi, Pearce and Brasier brought to the club. The deals which led to this year’s title certainly gutted the farm system, just look above, but it has produced three straight AL East titles and the performance of the trade pieces has yet to produce much, if anything for the Padres and the White Sox. Is this the best way to use prospects? I think the best way to be able to pick the Betts’s, Bogaerts’s and Benintendi’s from the Moncada’s, Margot’s and Basabe’s of the world. While the Tigers had a long run of strong contention they have fallen on tough times the Red Sox run is even better and it isn’t clear whether the Red Sox are heading that way. Even if the Sox hit a pothole is the recent success enough to say that Dombrowski’s idea on the best use of prospects is the best one? Finding the AL MVP in the 5th round of the draft doesn’t hurt either and a few more like that changes the equation completely. The fact that the 2015, 2016 and 2017 championships were won by teams that held on to their prized prospects, but had to visit the basement regularly to do that, seems to argue for a different path but, in today’s game where there is no loyalty holding a team together, it seems next to impossible unless the team is a big market money machine. The Royals and Pirates are just the most recent examples. Following the prospects is fun but getting the most value out of them is the only thing that counts and how that is best done will continue to be debated everywhere baseball is the official language
Great work. The teams in big trouble are the weak teams that also have lousy farm systems. Baltimore, KC and Seattle. Dark times ahead for them.
Obviously still a long-shot, and you could say this about at least half a dozen other teams, but you don’t have to squint hard to see the Padres becoming this years Braves. Lets prorate Franmil out over a season, get a healthy Franchy and a non shitty Hosmer and have a few of the prospects play well/get called up early and you are looking at a wildcard contender even without a rumored splash in the free agent pool. As a Mariner fan I am looking forward to the day I can bandwagon on to my second favorite team (the Padres yeah poor me) when they are perennial contenders because the Mariners aren’t going to be good until the mid 20’s at the earliest (if they finally rebuild).
I do find some fan responses funny however. Fans whose team just won it all this year complaining about the farm system not being up to snuff. Ultimately what are teams looking for? As an Oregonian, the Blazers are one of the most winningest franchises in the NBA. Off hand I think they have the 5th highest winning %of all time. They also only have one title. Is the goal to be competitive every single year but never quite good enough (they did get robbed in 2000 vs the Lakers but I digress) or to win it all sometimes and be horrible other times? As a fan, I know what I’d pick.