Baseball Prospectus' 2007 Farm System Analysis

[ironman]

Chicago Cubs - 26th for hitting, 15th for pitching

Ugh, they've done nothing to grow any talent on the offensive side of things. Quick name me the last player to come up through the Cubs system and have any impact....aside from that one season Corey Patterson was decent.

[Arrowhead Nation]

Chicago Cubs - 26th for hitting, 15th for pitching

Ugh, they've done nothing to grow any talent on the offensive side of things. Quick name me the last player to come up through the Cubs system and have any impact....aside from that one season Corey Patterson was decent.

Good point, but lets not give up on Pie just yet.

[ukjohn]

I might be a homer, but the Reds should be top 5 I think. they have the best 1-2 punch in the minors in Bailey and Bruce.

[PlayingWithFire]

I might be a homer, but the Reds should be top 5 I think. they have the best 1-2 punch in the minors in Bailey and Bruce.

Gordon and Butler?
Wood and Adenhart?

[ukjohn]

I might be a homer, but the Reds should be top 5 I think. they have the best 1-2 punch in the minors in Bailey and Bruce.

Gordon and Butler?
Wood and Adenhart?

those 2 < Bruce and Bailey

[Steve-o]

Baseball Prospectus' list is way better. They have everyone within at least 3 spots of where they should be.

As for the Hardball Times....Tampa bay? At 14th? They are loaded. Also, the Royals should be Top 10, not 28th. Thats just terrible. They also overrate the White Sox, Cubs and Indians.

The guy who wrote that column is a brewer blogger who also created the minor league splits page (which is excellent, if you're into that stuff). Here's what he had to say about the rankings.

Today, I took my own shot at ranking organizations in my Hardball Times column. Mine focused much more on methodology, but I did include my full rankings.

In my system (which isn't biased, really: it's just one giant spreadsheet), the Brewers come in fifth. There are some key ways in which my approach differs from Goldstein's (and frankly, makes mine worse): it is based entirely on '06 stats (so, for instance, Nelson Cruz is included as a Brewer, and Corey Hart's time in the minors helps a bit, too) and it doesn't count anyone below Low-A.

That second consideration is probably favorable toward the Crew--it'd be nice to get Cole Gillespie in there, but if we're counting people by their statistical contribution, Jeremy Jeffress, Rolando Pascual, and Brent Brewer aren't going to be worth much. If you're going by scouting rankings (like Goldstein did), they'll count quite nicely.

The wackiest way in which my rankings differ from Goldstein's is that for me, the Devil Rays come out at #14. There are some reasons for this: as I've mentioned, I count players by where they played the games, and the Rays acquired many prospects during the season. They're getting credit in Goldstein's system for that, but not in mine. Further, the Rays have one of the best hitting prospects in the game in Evan Longoria, but since he was drafted in '06, he doesn't register in my system.

Further still, the Rays have lots of toolsy guys, and while they've put up nice stats, their scouting reputations are stronger than their performances to date. That doesn't make Goldstein's analysis (or mine, I'd argue) wrong, it's just that the Rays' situation brings out all the key differences in these two very different approaches.

At the end of my article (if you get that far, I'm impressed--this is my longest column quite a while, and here I am, still writing about it), I discuss some of the ways I can (and probably will) improve my technique. It'll always be firmly on the "stats" side of the stats/scouts divide, but there are certainly things I can do to evade some of the issues that limited it this time around.

Finally, you'll notice in my article a really slick graphical presentation of the Dodgers system. (I included them because they were #1 by my method.) If you click here, you can see the same thing for the Brewers. I think it's pretty cool--the graphs are beyond my abilities, but on this project, I worked with John Burnson (editor of Graphical Player 2007, in which you'll find graphs for all 30 teams), who's incredible at that sort of thing.

I agree that Goldstein's list is better though. If you're curious, you can find the blog at brecrewball.com.

[Pokey]

One thing I've never liked about BPs prospect rankings (and a lot of prospect sites do this), is how they give the players upside. For instance, Michael Bowden "in a perfect world" is a middle of the rotation innings eater. But that's just not true. In the perfect world, Michael Bowden is a stud ace, same with every other pitcher. I remember last year, Anibal Sanchez's ceiling was that of a #3 starter, but did anyone actually think that was true at the time?

I would much prefer they did something like PECOTA, where they give percentiles. It doesn't have to be nearly as specific, but that way they could say for instance, that Bowden's 70th percentile would put him as a middle of the rotation innings eater, but his 90th (or 95th) percentile would have him as a legit #1.

Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but this has always bothered me.

[j_d_mcnugent]

I might be a homer, but the Reds should be top 5 I think. they have the best 1-2 punch in the minors in Bailey and Bruce.

Gordon and Butler?
Wood and Adenhart?

those 2 < Bruce and Bailey

interesting topic. that was recently covered in ask BA.

[thedude]

I might be a homer, but the Reds should be top 5 I think. they have the best 1-2 punch in the minors in Bailey and Bruce.

Gordon and Butler?
Wood and Adenhart?

those 2 < Bruce and Bailey

Not true at all.

Gordon=best prospect in baseball
Butler=one of the top hitters

Gordon > Bailey

Butler > Bruce

[ukjohn]

^^^
apparently baseball america has something to say about that

Bruce > Butler