The Pastime

As I did last year, I’m going to rank every MLB team’s farm system according to the grades given out by John Sickels. I just spent the last few hours poring over his book, and now I can’t wait for Spring Training to start so I can see some of these prospects in action.

Here’s my process: Sickels gives each prospect a grade between A and C, with + and - qualifiers. It’s not definitive, but just a rough estimate of the player and his skills. I’ve taken that grade, and weighted it as a GPA would be. 4.00 for an A, 3.67 for an A-, 3.33 for a B+, and so on. I used only the top 30 players from each system, just to make it fair.

Here’s where all 30 MLB teams grade out, by farm system GPA. (“Index” is just the last two digits of GPA multiplied by 100 so you can see the spread more effectively.)

There are a few significant changes from last years rankings.

The biggest movers were the Marlins (-8), Devil Rays (+11), Dodgers (-12), Rockies (+12), Brewers (-9), Royals (+12), Yankees (+18), Giants (-14), A’s (-8), and Mets (+14).

The Marlins, Dodgers and Brewers all dropped mainly due to the graduation of many minor leaguers to the Majors.

The A’s and Giants dropped rankings due to either injuries to key prospects (Daric Barton, Javier Herrera, Landon Powell), devaluation of players (Santiago Casilla), or trades (Andre Ethier).

The Devil Rays continue to keep their best players in the minors (Elijah Dukes, B.J. Upton, Delmon Young), increasing their farm system’s strength at the expense of the team. All three of those players should see time at Tampa Bay this season, though, so the 2008 grade should drop a dozen places or do.

Both New York teams have had their prospects ranked higher than last year (Phil Hughes, Mike Pelfrey, Jose Tabata, Philip Humber, etc.), which helps to explain their jump in the rankings.

The Royals have been given a big boost by the addition of Luke Hochevar and Alex Gordon, and the further development of Billy Butler and Chris Lubanski. With Dayton Moore at the helm, the Royals could be building a winner from the farm.

The biggest surprise to me is the jump that the Rockies have made. Sure, Troy Tulowitzki projects to be a great hitter, but who else is holding up their tent? Colorado has a lot of B+ and B grade players. Ten of ‘em, in fact, more than any other organization. With the offensive help that Coors provides, those players could go a long way.

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As a sidenote, don’t take these rankings too seriously. After all, they’re not very complex. Also, most “rankings” of organizations’ farm systems are 80% for entertainment value, as projecting single-A pitchers is much more of a guessing game than a science. Even Sickels agrees: “Many Grade A pitching prospects fail to develop, often due to injuries. Some Grade C pitching prospects turn out much better than expected.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 3:22 am and is filed under Oakland A's, Minors, General Baseball, Stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.