2015 Farm System Rankings (Law 6th/Fangraphs 6th)

thethe

thethe

Shift Leader
Staff member
This was just released by Keith Law. Maybe we can keep all minor league rankings and subsequent discussions to this thread:

6. Atlanta Braves

They were a bottom-5 system when the offseason started, but six trades later, they've built up a stash of prospects that makes up for five years of execrable drafts and very little production from their Latin American efforts. Ten of their top 12 prospects have appeared on at least one of my past three top-100 rankings, including five this year.
 
Its no secret that Law thought that Wren ran a horrible amateur scouting operation.
 
thethe said:
Its no secret that Law thought that Wren ran a horrible amateur scouting operation.
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I guess I never picked up on that, admittedly I don't follow these pundits that close.

Pretty rosy rating though, and although it was tough they have rebuilt that area nicely. Unless of course you are in the camp of thinking that Hart didn't take the best offers he got. Which...is...odd.
 
Tapate50 said:
I guess I never picked up on that, admittedly I don't follow these pundits that close.

Pretty rosy rating though, and although it was tough they have rebuilt that area nicely. Unless of course you are in the camp of thinking that Hart didn't take the best offers he got. Which...is...odd.
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I agree that the to ranking is aggressive but the new direction is off to a very good start. But, three really good players were traded so a revamping of the farm system shouldn't be surprising.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Since the goal is to have a great farm system maybe we should have kept Andrelton and Wood in the minors so our rankings would be higher.
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The goal is to always have a good farm system to supplement a good major league team. Unfortunatley, we had stars ready to get paid tremendous amounts of money and not much young talent ready to follow. Thats an issue. This required the front office to make tough decisions and try to develop another core while still churning out top farm systems. I feel confident with Roy Clark back in the fold.
 
Clearly the goal of improving the farm system has been successful, at least short term (and I'm confident an average amount of the new guys will do well enough to keep it successful). That's a positive.
 
Dalyn said:
Clearly the goal of improving the farm system has been successful, at least short term (and I'm confident an average amount of the new guys will do well enough to keep it successful). That's a positive.
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Shhhh! That's too positive! Truth is that we could have "possibly" done better with a few of the deals, but to me there is no denying that the system is much, much improved.
 
thethe said:
The goal is to always have a good farm system to supplement a good major league team. Unfortunatley, we had stars ready to get paid tremendous amounts of money and not much young talent ready to follow. Thats an issue. This required the front office to make tough decisions and try to develop another core while still churning out top farm systems. I feel confident with Roy Clark back in the fold.
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Its a half assed rebuild that will probably have half assed results.They should have traded everyone but Freeman and been bad enough for a few years to get some top 3 draft picks. Invest highly in the draft and international prospects. Whatever we did we should avoid signing 30+ year old mediocre players to 4 year deals.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Its a half assed rebuild that will probably have half assed results.They should have traded everyone but Freeman and been bad enough for a few years to get some top 3 draft picks. Invest highly in the draft and international prospects. Whatever we did we should avoid signing 30+ year old mediocre players to 4 year deals.
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Fair enough. Thats your opinion and approach you would have taken. Braves could not be bad going into the new ballpark so they had to go with a hybrid approach. The fact that they have a top 10 farm system as well as a major league club that is only a hitter or two away from being a potential wild card team shows me that they are succeeding with their approach. But again, until those hitters develop or are acquired the group of people against this strategy look right.
 
thethe said:
Fair enough. Thats your opinion and approach you would have taken. Braves could not be bad going into the new ballpark so they had to go with a hybrid approach. The fact that they have a top 10 farm system as well as a major league club that is only a hitter or two away from being a potential wild card team shows me that they are succeeding with their approach. But again, until those hitters develop or are acquired the group of people against this strategy look right.
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They didn't have to be bad. They had premium talent right here in house and they sent them packing. They will have to pay for premium talent to replace them one way or the other.
 
thethe said:
Fair enough. Thats your opinion and approach you would have taken. Braves could not be bad going into the new ballpark so they had to go with a hybrid approach. The fact that they have a top 10 farm system as well as a major league club that is only a hitter or two away from being a potential wild card team shows me that they are succeeding with their approach. But again, until those hitters develop or are acquired the group of people against this strategy look right.
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If those hitters are Mike Trout and his twin brother Mac Trout, you might be right on that.
 
sturg33 said:
They didn't have to be bad. They had premium talent right here in house and they sent them packing. They will have to pay for premium talent to replace them one way or the other.
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The payroll on the team wold have been way too high to allow for flexibility to plug holes that a terrible farm system could not replenish.

Not saying your way isn't a smart approach but I'm just not sure how sustainable that would have been. I just don't know how easily they could have filled at least 2/5ths of the rotation with no leftover funds.
 
Take our top 25 minor league players and pit them against our "Major league" team. Curious how that one would play out.
 
I like KLaw's writing. I think it's safe to say that his bias is towards high upside guys over high probability guys. So it makes sense to me that he's probably high on our pitching prospects b/c of the high ceilings. We'll see if they make the majors.

I'd rather have a top 6 MLB team than a farm system, but glad we have some guys to follow and get excited about.

I'm on board with the new program. Just thought we'd get a little more for JUp and hate Markakis signing.

If we flip minor and Kimbrel at the deadline for big deals, then I'll be much happier.
 
thethe said:
The payroll on the team wold have been way too high to allow for flexibility to plug holes that a terrible farm system could not replenish.

Not saying your way isn't a smart approach but I'm just not sure how sustainable that would have been. I just don't know how easily they could have filled at least 2/5ths of the rotation with no leftover funds.
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I think a plausible argument can be made that we should have patched something together and gone for it in 2015, but I think you're right that a rebuild was around the corner and management chose to do it before this season instead of next season. I think the bottom line is you can't be in the Braves' payroll strata and have a farm system as bereft of talent as ours had become.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Since the goal is to have a great farm system maybe we should have kept Andrelton and Wood in the minors so our rankings would be higher.
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Not significantly. Even with Simmons and Wood in the system and let's assume they'd be dominating, we'd still be middle of the pack without the trades we made.
 
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