After ranking the top 100 individual prospects in baseball in the 2021 MLB season, it’s time to turn our attention to the farming system of each team as a whole.
These rankings of the 30 organizations were made, for the most part, in the same way as last year. In short, while at FanGraphs, Craig Edwards’ research revealed the surplus of empirical dollar values for each level of potential, so that we can now make an objective ranking derived from my individual team lists.
You may be wondering how this could be so different from last year’s standings because there was no minor league season and I’m glad you asked! Several factors have changed the place of a team compared to last year at this time. Obviously there are players who enter (draft, international transfers, transactions) and exit (graduations, transactions). Since we haven’t had a traditional minor league season, there are few moves from the lower juniors, with a few up / down arrow players from each club having a fall training league.
There are also a handful of alternative moves on the site, but both camps have had fewer scouts compared to a minor league season; some teams shared some data / videos on alternative sites, and some training games had 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 dollars in expected profitability, and also because the best prospects are those who can earn a lot of value by playing well in the big leagues.
There are also two less obvious factors: First, last year we used generic values for each fair value level, so potential customers 50 and 110 valued exactly the same. In most cases, this would not move so many agricultural systems. This year we used a graduated scale with a small difference between each place in the top 117 (all the best 50 and the best customers). We also found that some players in the lower levels of minors dropped half a grade just because they had some anticipation of a break taken into account in the last year, and few of them went to the alternative site, training has been at home for months and some have not even received one. formal training league.
A new element this year, as it is the second to make these rankings for ESPN, is to show the movement of last year’s list. I didn’t look at them until I blocked all the rankings, so there are some trends that have appeared in the metadata. First, the 30 agricultural systems total $ 6.137 billion, nearly 400 million less than last year. This also comes with 99 additional prospects in the team lists. I think this is due to the fact that the information I receive from alternative sites and instructions tends to be positive, and the negative is evaluated with all the conditions of last year. Without the potential that can put a terrible statistical line, it is difficult to drop one from the list. So the bottom of the charts tends to be longer, with a lack of bad data, while the top of the charts can’t move that far north without positive data on the prospects of the elite.
So without a minor league season, the top of the list is kept a little down and the bottom of the list is pushed a little up, or the list is not cut when it would otherwise have been. More players on the list, 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 happen. When classifying farms!