Archive for minor league rankings

Everything in life is cyclical; just look it up. Depending on your subject of interest, you can likely find some meditation on the cyclic nature of events in that particular field. Politics, history, sociology — heck, even opera has cycles. Baseball is no different. Whether it’s the dynamic between pitchers and hitters, strategic trends, or the success of individual teams, each side of the coin will come up eventually.

One key area in baseball that exhibits this cyclic nature is in the relative strength of organizational prospect talent. Every year, we see various outlets publish their rankings of the league’s assorted farm systems, thus giving hope to downtrodden franchises everywhere. Baseball America just released their list, while Baseball Prospectus and John Sickels will surely follow soon with their own. As all these lists are published, it’s worthwhile to consider how clubs tend to navigate the crests and troughs of such rankings, and what that movement implies for a team’s future.

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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.

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.

Yesterday, we took a look at the bottom 10 organizations in Major League Baseball, in terms of minor-league talent. Naturally, that means today’s post will look at the middle-of-the-road minor league systems.

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

The Middle 10:
NO.  BA    BP    FAN  
11.   KC   COL   BOS 
12.  PHI   CLE   CIN
13.  BOS   NYY   MIL
14.  CIN   PHI   COL
15.  NYY   MIL   TOR
16.  CWS    KC   PHI
17.  NYM   SEA   NYY
18.  PIT   NYM   NYM
19.  TOR   CIN   PIT
20.  COL   MIN   MIN

The biggest discrepancies in the rankings, when comparing the three publications, definitely appears to be with the Colorado Rockies (20th, 11th, 14th) and the Kansas City Royals (11th, 16th, 10th). Personally, I really like the top seven prospects in the Colorado system, which include pitchers Jhoulys Chacin, Christian Friedrich, catcher Wilin Rosario, and outfielder Dexter Fowler. I also probably like catcher Mike McKenry and utility player Eric Young Jr. more than most.

As for Kansas City whom I rated higher than anyone else, I think the top three prospects have the potential to be excellent Major League players: Eric Hosmer (1B), Mike Moustakas (3B), and Tim Melville (SP). The club had the best amateur draft in 2008, which is impressive considering that the organization did it with just one supplemental pick – and they cannot compete money-for-money with clubs like New York and Boston when it comes to free agents – and even international talent. Other players I really like in the KC system include pitchers Danny Duffy, Mike Montgomery, Daniel Gutierrez, Kelvin Herrera, catcher Jose Bonilla and outfielder Mitch Maier, who deserves the opportunity to go to an organization that will let him earn a MLB bench role.

With the money that Boston and New York both have, you’d think that it would show up more in the talent filtered throughout their systems. In Boston’s case, the club has improved in that area in the last couple of seasons and could really take a step forward in 2009 if players like Ryan Westmoreland, Pete Hissey, Anthony Rizzo, Will Middlebrooks, and Junichi Tazawa perform like their scouting reports suggest they will. I will never, ever bet against Boston as an organization as long as the current upper management is in place. They’re just smart – and this would likely be a winning organization even if they were in the bottom half of the Majors in salary potential.

New York, not unlike Boston, has been hurt in terms of minor-league talent by trades for established Major Leaguers. With that said, the club has paid a lot of money to prospects like Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes, only to have them under-perform. Other prospects like Andrew Brackman and Alfredo Aceves – and now possibly Ramiro Pena – get overrated by the media in and around New York. Whereas Boston builds bridges over the organization’s holes, New York seems to try and cover its holes with mat created by taping dollar bills together.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve looked at some of the more interesting prospects in each of the 30 MLB team’s minor league systems. With the Minor League Baseball season beginning at the end of this week, let’s now take a look – over the next three days – at who has the best and the worst minor league systems in the game.

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

The Bottom 10:

NO.  BA    BP    FAN  
21.  WAS   LAD   CWS 
22.  MIN   PIT   SEA
23.  LAD   LAA   LAD
24.  SEA   CWS   WAS
25.  LAA   SD    ARZ
26.  ARZ   CHC   SD
27.  CHC   DET   LAA
28.  DET   ARZ   CHC
29.  SD    WAS   DET
30.  HOU   HOU   HOU

Obviously, minor league rankings are subjective. Each opinion is neither correct nor incorrect. For the most part, though, there is agreement upon the worst minor league systems in Major League Baseball. The biggest disagreements appear to be with these three organizations: Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Chicago (AL). So why is that? With Pittsburgh, you have the big three hitters: Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutchen, and Jose Tabata. After that, well, you go on gut feel because the system is thin.

Seattle has a lot of raw, toolsy guys that can be hard to read. Yes, Greg Halman put up a near 30-30 season, but his walk/strikeout rates are poor and his career batting average is just .262 – and mostly in the low minors. Phillippe Aumont has the chance to be a monster pitcher with a heavy, hard fastball – but he’s already showing signs of being injury prone (something that seems to plague Canadian starting pitchers… Erik Bedard, Shawn Hill, Rich Harden, Jeff Francis, Adam Loewen, etc).

In Chicago, there is not a whole lot to get excited about. Personally, I am not as big of a Gordon Beckham fan as most people are – especially in Chicago. He’s good, but I don’t think he’s superstar good. My favorite prospect in the system is Tyler Flowers, and he was just obtained this past off-season from the Atlanta Braves. Then you have Aaron Poreda, who is a left-handed pitcher with an above-average fastball and poor secondary pitches. You can dream on him and see a dominating starter… if everything clicks. If not, then maybe he can be a closer. Beyond those prospects… there isn’t much that excites me at this point.

The one thing that all three publications agree on in their evaluations is that Houston has the worst minor league system in all of baseball: A firm No. 30 out of 30. The club is really hurting from an ownership that penny-pinched on the amateur draft process… apparently not realizing that developing your own in-house talent and paying them a MLB salary for the first six years is A LOT cheaper than throwing a four- or five-year contract at a 32-year-old free agent. The undisputed No. 1 prospect in the system in 2008 first-round draft pick – and catcher – Jason Castro. My favorite player in the system is 2008 prep draftee Ross Seaton.