Ranking the Minors: The Top 10

by
April 8, 2009

We made it. After looking at the bottom 10 baseball organizations in terms of minor-league talent, and then the middle 10, we are now on to the best 10 systems in all of Major League Baseball. We’ve also been looking at how other publications have ranked the systems and all three of us feel pretty confident in the Top 6 teams. They appear in different orders one-through-six but they’re all there.

(BA = Baseball America, BP = Baseball Prospectus, FAN = FanGraphs)

The Top 10:
NO.  BA    BP    FAN
 1.  TEX   OAK   OAK
 2.  FLA   TEX   TEX
 3.  OAK    TB   FLA
 4.   TB   ATL   ATL
 5.   SF   FLA    TB
 6.  ATL    SF    SF
 7.  CLE   BAL   BAL
 8.  STL   BOS   CLE
 9.  BAL   STL   STL
10.  MIL   TOR    KC

The Top 6 teams, unanimously, are: Oakland, Texas, Florida, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and San Francisco. All six teams have seen their share of ups and downs, and have been aided by favorable slotting in the June amateur draft in recent years, which has helped their systems. Both Texas (6 picks) and San Francisco (6 picks) had multiple first and second round draft picks in the 2007 draft, which also helped the Toronto Blue Jays (7 picks), a club that was ranked 10th by Baseball Prospectus. San Diego (ranked 26th overall by FanGraphs) led clubs in 2007 with eight picks in the first two rounds, but selected seven players out of college and five of those players had modest starts to their pro careers. Top pick Nick Schmidt underwent Tommy John surgery not long after signing his contract (three games). Obviously, you have to make the most out of your opportunities.

An argument can seemingly be made for either Texas or Oakland sitting at No. 1 overall. Both clubs have made some good draft choices (Derek Holland by Texas, Trevor Cahill for Oakland) and each team has been helped by key trades. Texas’ system took a huge step forward after a trade with Atlanta that saw Mark Teixeira swapped for young catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia and prospects Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison and Beau Jones. Oakland made three solid trades that netted prospects such as Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, Adrian Cardenas, Aaron Cunningham, and Gio Gonzalez.

Based on the FanGraphs’ Top 10 Organizations:

  • Biggest Surprise to be in the Top 10: St. Louis
  • Best Chance to Improve Even More in 2009: Texas
  • Best Chance to Regress in 2009: Florida
  • Most Likely to Produce a Rookie of the Year in 1-3 Years: Florida
  • Club With the Best Pitching Depth: Texas

    • St. Louis is a surprising club in the Top 10 – I thought I’d made an error when I first tabulated my personal list – because it was a bottom-20 team for at least the last five years prior to 2008-09. It’s hard to improve upon Top 1st or 2nd but Texas could actually do it, depending on how many prospects graduate to the Majors in 2009… There are some talented players in rookie and A-ball that could quickly move up the rankings. Florida is no stranger to the NL Rookie of the Year award after winning it twice in the last six seasons (Hanley Ramirez, Dontrelle Willis) and Cameron Maybin could be next in line… and then Logan Morrison… and then Michael Stanton or Matt Dominguez… The club is also the most likely to regress because it relies so heavily on its young players on the Major League roster that it can deplete stock pretty quickly. The tight-fisted management also tends to trade off its ‘veteran’ players before they have the opportunity to become free agents and bring in compensatory draft picks.

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    Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.

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