Happy Anniversary.
Following Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus’s announcements, MLB.com revealed its own Top 100 Prospects list this weekend, and its wake offered a relatively objective assessment of whose farm systems are strongest, as well as one subjective evaluation.
On the subjective side, MLB.com senior writer Jim Callis, former executive editor of Baseball America, tweeted that he would rank the best systems in baseball in this order: Dodgers, Braves, Rockies, Rangers, and Red Sox.
But based on formula — assigning 100 points to the player MLB.com judges to be the number one prospect in the game, 99 points to the number two player, and on down to one point to the prospect ranked number 100 — Texas finished first by a healthy margin, amassing 353 points, followed by the same four other teams (Rockies 325, Dodgers 319, Red Sox 316, Braves 302).
That’s not why I wanted to write about this today.
If the players Texas sent Philadelphia for Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman were still Rangers property, including the three who land on MLB.com’s list (Nick Williams at 25th overall, Jake Thompson at number 34, Jorge Alfaro at number 70), the Rangers would have 527 points under the formula.
Again, the number two through number five teams earned 325, 319, 316, and 302 points. If the Rangers hadn’t made the Hamels/Diekman trade, they’d be at 527.
Instead, they’re at 353 — still best in baseball by MLB.com’s estimation and math — and by virtue of that trade have absurdly affordable control over Hamels for the next four seasons and absurdly affordable control over Diekman for the next three.
Not to mention the 2015 playoff berth (and an ALCS date that was within painfully short reach), which we can probably all agree wouldn’t have happened without those two lefties arriving at the end of July.
Those 353 points come courtesy of Joey Gallo being ranked number 9 overall (and owning what MLB.com considers the best power in minor league ball and the third-strongest throwing arm among position players), Lewis Brinson checking in at number 16, Nomar Mazara at number 18, Dillon Tate at number 36 (with the minor leagues’ best slider), and Luis Ortiz at number 73 (third-best in evaluation of pitchers’ control).
Baseball Prospectus, as discussed last week, has Mazara (5), Gallo (8), and Brinson (15) ranked as three of the five best prospects in all of the American League, with Tate (59) and Ortiz (68) showing up on its Top 101 list as well.
MLB.com also notes that the Phillies lead baseball with seven prospects on its Top 101.
Four of those seven arrived via trade.
Three of them were Rangers, until six months ago today.
The equipment truck leaves for Surprise on Tuesday, and attention turns full-scale to the big club — whose initial workouts will include Gallo and Mazara, who are on the 40-man roster, and Brinson, who was invited to join them even though he’s not yet on the 40 — but for now, we can wrap up the prospect focus that helps annually to get us from the Winter Meetings to Pitchers & Catchers, regardless of how much activity there is on the big league acquisition level.
Happy Half-Year Anniversary to the Phillies, whose acquisition of Williams, Thompson, and Alfaro helped accelerate their hopes to become a factor once again.
And to the Rangers, whose allocation of those three, plus Jerad Eickhoff and Alec Asher and Matt Harrison’s contract, announced formally on July 31, helped get them to 162+ in 2015 and boosts their chances to repeat the feat in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 . . . and whose farm system, in spite of taking that considerable hit, is still considered, by at least one measure, to be the very best in the game.
Rev up that truck.