Future Redbirds

I wanted to take Goldstein’s individual team rankings and run a quick and dirty check to see how it matches up against his organization rankings. Nothing complicated numbers wise and thus we’ve got some caveats to my method.

Azru’s Total

This is a really straight forward system I’m using here. I’ve got the number of prospects ranked at each “star” level from Goldstein’s Top 11 Prospect Lists. I’m assuming a pyramid structure meaning that top-tier talent is scarce compared to talent near the bottom. Thus we’d value 5-star prospects more than just 5 times a 1-star prospect. In this case, I’m using 10 points for a 5-star, 7 for a 4-star, 5 for a 3-star, 3 for a 2-star and 1 for a 1-star. Add up the value of the Top 11 prospects and we should come out close to Goldstein’s organizational rankings, ideally.

Caveats

The first and most profound difference someone is likely to have with what I’ve done is the pyramid scheme. I’m basically contending that we should value talent in a non-linear fashion. If you read The Book Blog at all, you’re probably familiar with the fact that salary research indicates MLB teams pay their free agents in a linear fashion. That’s not to say they’re right just that salaries do not reflect a non-linear relationship. In my opinion, the scarcity of top-tier talent creates an added incentive to sign those players relative to average or replacement level players. I think the same notion applies to blue chip prospects. Would you trade Colby Rasmus for Eric Patterson and Jeff Samardzija of the Cubs? I wouldn’t because I think Rasmus is more valuable than just a 3-star and a 2-star prospect. I’m not sure I can sell everyone on this concept but I want to make you at least aware of my reasoning.

The second caveat is that this process assumes all same level prospects are of the same value. Is Geovany Soto as valuable as Jay Bruce? Probably not but their teams get the same credit for each. Does it matter that some 5-stars are at AAA (Bruce) while others haven’t thrown a major league pitch prior to their rankings (Porcello)? Again, a potential flaw in the method.

The third caveat is that this method will understate depth. Once your past the Top 11 prospects, you could have Team A which still has 4 or 5 2-star prospects while Team B has only 1 more 2-star prospect. I think the attrition rate among those lesser prospects mitigates this as the Top 11 prospects are probably going to give you a decent ballpark idea of the state of the farm system.

Results

The first table shows the raw numbers for the teams. Only one team lacked the depth to make it to 1-star prospects: the lowly Royals. The average point total is approximately 60, which is right around the middle of the list. That seems to be an aesthetically pleasing result. The standard deviation is 10 points. That seems to indicate that the Rays are really a standout organization in terms of talent and the Royals, Astros and White Sox are really bottom feeders as far as farm systems are concerned. The other teams fall within (or close to) a standard deviation from average which also seems like a nice result. The process doesn’t yeild many outliers but the teams that are on the outside seem to belong there. I’d like to think that’s because the method has validity but it’s also possible (even probable) that my number stratification for the different levels supresses outliers.

So the question then becomes where do the differences lie. Below you’ll see the difference between my method and KG’s organizational rankings (Teams 1-15, Teams 16-30). Note: This is not how I, personally would rank the teams, merely what my method of tallying Goldstein’s team rankings output.

Looking at the list I’m impressed with how close the two came to matching. The significant differences seem to be the Braves, Phillies and Royals. The Braves seem to get overlooked in Goldstein’s organizational rankings. They’ve got a nice spread of talent across the tiers. I personally prefer a team like the Reds who have a lot of near-MLB ready high ceiling talent but the Braves consistently produce major leaguers from their farm system and they look like they’ll continue to do so. My method shows the Phillies being underrated but I’m not impressed with their collection of prospects by any means. Given that they are deriving most of their points from 3-star prospects, I’m willing to assign caveat #2 to this discrepancy. Either way they are a bottom third farm system. Given that the Royals are the only team to make it down into 1-star prospects and that they aren’t a top heavy system, I’d be tempted to put them dead last while Goldstein ranked them 22nd. That seems odd to me and I don’t have a good explanation for it.

Anywho, none of this should be intended as a slight towards KG, whom I have the utmost respect for. Just trying to evaluate the consistency of his work. Hold his feet to the fire, so to speak.