Having ranked in the top 100 individual prospects in baseball for the MLB 2021 season, it’s time to focus our attention on each team’s farm system as a whole.
These classifications of the 30 organizations were conducted, for the most part, in the same way as they were done last year. In short, while I was at FanGraphs, Craig Edwards ’research revealed empirical values in excess dollars for each prospect level, so we can now make an objective classification derived from the lists of my individual teams.
You may be wondering how this could be very different from last year’s standings, as there wasn’t a minor league season, and I’m glad they asked me! Several factors changed a team’s place compared to last year at this time. The obvious are the incoming players (draft, international signings, changes) and outgoing players (graduations, exchanges). Since we didn’t have a traditional minor league season, there is little movement from the lower minor players, with a couple of players with up / down arrows from each club who had a fall instructional league.
There are also a handful of alternative site removals, but both camps had fewer scouts compared to a minor league season; some teams shared some data / videos on alternate sites, and some instructional games had talent scouts present. The highest value gains are in the top 100, both because the expected contributions of any player who is not in the top 100 are valued at less than $ 10 million, while that of the best player is worth $ 112 million in expected return. , and also because the best prospects are those who can gain a lot of value by playing well in the big leagues.
There are also two less obvious factors: First, last year I used the generic values for each level of fair value, so the prospects in places 50 and 110 were worth exactly the same. In most cases, this would not move so many farming systems. This year I used a graduated scale with a small difference between each place among the top 117 (all 50 and top prospects). I also found that some players in the lower levels of the minors dropped half a grade just because I had some anticipation of a factored escape last year, and few of them went to the alternate place, training at home for months, and some didn’t even get a formal instructional league.
A new item this year, as it’s the second time I’ve done these rankings for ESPN, is to show last year’s list move. I didn’t look at them until I blocked all the rankings, so there are a couple of trends that came up in the metadata. First, the 30 estate systems total $ 6.137 billion, nearly $ 400 million less than last year. This also comes with an additional 99 prospects on the team listings. I think this is because the information I get from alternative sites and instructions tends to be positive, and the negative is qualified with all of last year’s conditions. Without prospects who can put up a terrible line of statistics, it’s hard to get one off the list. Therefore, the bottom of the rosters tends to be longer with the lack of incorrect data, while the top of the lists cannot move as far north without positive data on elite prospects.
Then, without a minor league season, the top of the list stays a little pressed and the bottom of the list pushes a little up, or the list isn’t cut when it would otherwise have been. . More players on the roster, less overall value; that makes sense to me. I don’t think this specific set of circumstances will happen again, and I really hope it doesn’t. In the classification of estates!