While we’ve probably got a few more players being negotiated with, I figured it’s the right time to do another quick run through the league’s farm systems. So, yeah, let’s take a look.
BNN RANKINGS:
Looking first at the BNN system rankings, we see the always deep New Orleans system at the top of the table, with Hawaii and Louisville neck and neck for second, Edmonton hanging back a bit in fourth.
As I wrote last year: “The BNN rankings are suspect for several reasons, not the least of which is because they focus exclusively on what that system considers the top 100 prospects, and because that system’s methodology for determining those top 100 are hidden and often things to be boggled at.”
That said, they’re still not bad to look at and as a general rule you do probably want to be toward the top rather than down around the bottom, as are Jacksonville, Las Vegas, and the expansionistic Portland ball clubs, all scoring zero points.
BBA RANKINGS:
Now we come to the work of this post—that being the deeper-dive that “models” a FanGraphs prospect lists, accounts for system depth by providing a linear weight to players of each overall rating on the 80/20 scale. I should note that once again, I tweaked the calculations here, this time through—specifically to add back in the 45 and 40-rated prospects, but at a much smaller weighting. Last year I took them out completely, but in retrospect, that completely ignores the opportunity of a deep bumper, and we know those happen. So I added them into the mix as they had been in the accounting prior to last year, but cut their strength by an additional 50%.
Anyway, as we discussed some last year, there are still problems with this approach—not the least is that an “80” reliever is probably not really and “80” impact. And it doesn’t weight players by age or level (hence it doesn’t account for development risk)—but then again, as far as we can tell, neither does OOTP’s BNN stuff.
Bottom line, though, is that this approach clearly gives a deeper cut on overall value, and on the whole, at least to my eyes, tends to pass the eye test much better.
Moving along now, here’s the raw data:
READING THE CHART:
As with before, the data is sorted by division and weighted Total System Score (wTot). Each team’s total number of prospects are displayed per rating, then the wTot and the system’s overall ranking. The next two columns (wTop, wTopRk) are the same calculations, but count only prospects rated 60 and higher.
The blue headers are the team’s OOTP/BNN rank and points.
After that are each team’s overall rankings across time—so you can track how a team has moved over the past.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT:
The BBA/Fangraphs system rates the top five systems as:
1. Twin Cities
2. Yellow Springs
3. New Orleans
4. Calgary
5. Louisville
Montreal is not far behind as the #6 overall rank.
The big news here is the moving and shaking that Scott Piccoli in Twin Cities did with his fire sale last season. The River Monster front office took some heat when they tore down the club, with some pundits saying they didn’t get enough for some of their guys. While this argument may or may not be true, the bottom line today is that Piccoli made a decision and executed it, and now—by this measure at least—owns the best minor league system in the league.
I should note here that I’m counting only players in the minor leagues, so I’m specifically ignoring prospect-aged kids at the BBA level. This gets to be a little important when you look teams who are graduating their very young kids into the bigs. Des Moines, as you’ll see soon for example, is on our big “fallers” list, but a large portion of their prospect list is playing at the big league level in what is now clearly a true strategy. The club is winning a bit with these players, and is clearly quite young due to them. But it means that by this metric, they fell from the #12 system last year to the #23 this year, despite being on the front end of their ramp up.
A similar thing can be said for other teams who are using several young players—my own Yellow Springs being another example.
Anyway, YS9, New Orleans, Calgary, and Louisville were on this list last season, so this represents a continuation of organizational approaches. Montreal’s strong move into the #6 slot suggests their rebuild is clearly coming from the bottom up.
BIG MOVERS:
Teams that have improved their systems the most since the past review are:
Twin Cities: Was 26, now 1
Montreal: Was 18, now 6
Chicago: Was 13, now 7
Rockville: Was 15, now 10
Madison: Was 22, now 14
Atlantic City: Was 23, now 15
Seattle: Was 27, now 18
Of particular interest here is that both Twin Cities and Montreal are rated down chart by OOTP (TWC is 12th, MNT 16th), but the deeper BBA/Fangraphs approach puts them in the upper reaches of the field. You can say the same for Chicago, who OOTP sees as 25th, but who has 14 prospects rated 50 or above in their organization…good enough to be 7th here.
FALLERS:
As noted last year, this system is a zero-sum game, meaning that for every riser there has to be a faller. Looking at these shows us:
1) Nashville (was 23, now 32)
2) Long Beach (was 20, now 28)
3) Las Vegas (was 19, now 24)
4) Des Moines (was 12, now 23)
5) Boise (was 13, now 22)
6) Jacksonville (was 7, now 21)
7) Valencia (was 8, now 15)
Nashville falling to the bottom is interesting given The Plan and Brett Golden’s move to Charlotte, and given Matt’s comments upon taking the team that he likes what he sees. Bottom line, unless the development train hits hard, this metric doesn’t see them putting much into the big leagues for some time.
Long Beach’s fade appears to have been a planned approach to pump future value into the big league roster. Vegas had a similar approach last year, making several deadline deals in a pennant chase. I’ve already discussed Des Moines’ approach—which has been to push kids into the bigs and see if they can swim. Boise has been in a similar mode, but I’d say most of their prospects have been more naturally “ready.” Regardless, that still means their drop in this metric is due to graduation rather than busts … at least for the most part.
A GRAPHICAL LOOK AT THE RANKINGS
Since it was fun last year, I again charted each teams scores (wTot, wTop) to get a visual feel for where each system really stands. This gives you a cool visual of the separations, and which teams are more top heavy or bottom heavy in the source of their power ranks.
), was back at an 80.
