Farm System Value Rankings

by erik on Mar 27, 2009 6:00 AM EDT

Team	$ Val.	BA rank	BP rank	$ rank
Marlins	148	2	5	1
Braves	144.4	6	4	2
A's	143.3	3	1	3
Rangers	127.4	1	2	4
Rays	113.2	4	3	5
O's	112.1	9	7	6
Royals	107.5	11	16	7
Indians	105.7	7	12	8
Giants	103.5	5	6	9
Brewers	99.7	10	15	10
Red Sox	99.2	13	8	11
Cardinals	98.9	8	9	12
Yankees	97.8	15	13	13
Phillies	95.6	12	14	14
Twins	94.3	22	20	15
Blue Jays	94.1	19	10	16
Mariners	85	24	17	17
Mets	83.5	17	18	18
Reds	78.5	14	19	19
Pirates	76.9	18	22	20
D'Backs	74	26	28	21
White Sox	72.06	16	24	22
Rockies	72.04	20	11	23
Padres	69.8	29	25	24
Dodgers	69.3	23	21	25
Angels	62.5	25	23	26
Nationals	58.4	21	29	27
Cubs	57.6	27	26	28
Astros	50.1	30	30	29
Tigers	45.1	28	27	30

$ Val. = Total team farm system surplus value.

BA Rank = Baseball America talent ranking for 2009.

BP Rank = Baseball Prospectus organizational ranking for 2009. (talent ranking, organizational ranking...same thing.)

The average farm system was $91.3M.

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Comments

Pretty consistent

The ones that come out at me are the Royals and Twins make a pretty sizeable jump. D’backs to an extent too. I guess the Braves moving past the Rangers, A’s, and Rays is pretty big too.

All those B grade pitching prospects really add up.

by VictorW on Mar 27, 2009 9:24 AM EDT reply actions

Cubs - 28th?

I am assuming that the Cubs are 28th on the list between the Nationals and Astros.

"The big possums walk late." - Harry Caray

by memphiscub on Mar 27, 2009 9:33 AM EDT reply actions

Erik can't bring himself to type C-u-b-s

by Harry Pavlidis on Mar 27, 2009 9:35 AM EDT up reply actions

it hurt, but i fixed it.

i guess I blocked them out of my mind.

Beyond the Boxscore

by erik on Mar 27, 2009 12:00 PM EDT up reply actions

thanks

but you can take them off again, I don’t need to be reminded

by Harry Pavlidis on Mar 27, 2009 12:18 PM EDT up reply actions

enjoy the ride while you can

Beyond the Boxscore

by erik on Mar 27, 2009 12:25 PM EDT up reply actions

Correlation between the BA rank and $ rank is 0.91; 0.88 between BP and $ ranks.
For just the top 10 (according to $), it is 0.64 and 0.69 with BP having the higher correlation. The correlation between BA and BP rankings for the top 10 is 0.86. 0.87 for the all 30 teams

by ultxmxpx on Mar 27, 2009 10:03 AM EDT reply actions

Doing an average of the rankings to get the top 10 instead of using the $ rank: there is a .71 correlation coefficient between BA-$, 0.68 between BP-$. That should tell you BA isn’t correlated closer to $ than BP (nor is BP closer)… for the top 10 anyways.

by ultxmxpx on Mar 27, 2009 10:27 AM EDT reply actions

That's interesting, considering BA was an input to the $ rankings, while BPro wasn't.

Might be that BPro is already accounting for giving more weight to top tier hitters and less to top tier pitchers.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 27, 2009 10:32 AM EDT up reply actions

Correlation to payroll, wins.

I would have thought there would be a moderately strong relationship between the minor league value and recent wins, but not really:

MiLvalue to 2008 wins, -0.01
MiLvalue to 2006-8 wins -0.15
MiLvalue to 2004-8 wins +0.01

MiLvalue to 2008 payroll was -0.34
And -0.25 to a weighted 3 year average of payroll [.6, .5, .4]

by erosen on Mar 27, 2009 10:38 AM EDT reply actions

That negative correlation to payroll is pretty interesting.

There are two lines of thought. First, teams with money keep their prospects in the minors longer because they sign free agent and they spend more money to sign prospects. Second, they trade away prospects for veterans more often, and don’t focus as much on hoarding prospects in order to compete. Looks like the second point of view carries more weight.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 27, 2009 10:49 AM EDT up reply actions

Sweet!

As a Braves fan, I’m glad that they did so well in this analysis. It’s amazing how in just a couple of years, we;ve gone from the whole scortched farm system meme due to the Tex trade to the realization that the franchise knows what it’s doing and will maintain a healthy base of prospects so long as the same leadership is in charge.

by ejruiz on Mar 27, 2009 1:57 PM EDT reply actions

If I run a farm system, I'm definitely going the route of trading anything and everything for a few top hitting prospects, and then taking the spaghetti-on-the-wall approach for mid-grade pitchers.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Mar 27, 2009 3:27 PM EDT up reply actions

It really is fascinating to see ...

… how bad the NL teams are compared to the AL teams in nearly everything (on avg. of course)! They make up for 10 (!!!) of the last 13 teams on this list!

by BurGi on Mar 30, 2009 10:49 AM EDT reply actions

Avg difference.

The average NL team’s farm was worth $86.3M; $97.1M for AL. That is a difference $10.8M

Here are some ways of coming up with that $10.8M

one extra 76-100 hitter
one extra 51-75 pitcher
a 76-100 pitcher and a grade C pitcher under 23
a grade B pitcher and a grade B hitter
two grade B hitters
5+ grade C hitters and pitchers

Would I be mistaken to say that any one of those doesn’t seem like that huge of a gap?

I’d also be curious how the DH impacts this— Are AL teams more likely to carry a super slugger with such negative projected defensive value that he almost HAS to DH? If so, could there be a small bias towards AL teams?

by erosen on Apr 1, 2009 1:44 PM EDT up reply actions

Depends how you define huge.

It’s one extra good prospects per team, not just one overall. If you divided up all the Yankees’ huge contracts, it’s only like half a player per team, which doesn’t sound huge.

Also, $10M buys about two wins on the free agent market. Two wins doesn’t seem huge, but if I present it as 20% of the difference between an average team and a 91 win team (which has a decent shot at the playoffs), it seems huge, under some definition.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Apr 1, 2009 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions