Farm System Rankings based on Fangraphs Top 200 Prospects List

This morning Kiley McDaniel and Fangraphs released their Top 200 prospects list. This list goes deeper than any of the other national prospects list (at least among the ones worth looking at), so it gives us a better idea of how strong a farm system is. Six teams had at 10 or 11 prospects make the Top 200 and fairly or unfairly, a teams Top 10 prospects make up the quality of their farm system when it comes to rankings. While teams with extra depth or little depth beyond there will sway their ranking a spot or three, it’s the big guns in the top 10 that make or break a ranking.

As a fun little exercise I took the Top 200 prospects and used an AP style point system for the prospects with the #1 prospect getting 200 points and each spot getting one less point. Since McDaniel only ranked the top 142 players, then grouped the guys 143-200 together, I took the middle ground on all of those prospects and gave each player in that range 30 points for their ranking. Then I tallied up the scores for each organization. Here’s what the data spits out for the 2015 Farm System Rankings:

Using this system of rankings, the Cincinnati Reds come in as the 8th best farm system in baseball (entire rankings breakdown at the end of this post). Surprising to no one was the Cubs at the top of the list. They are very heavy on hitters, which crushes everyone in hitter value, but they are very light on pitching. Let’s take a closer look at the National League Central teams.

Among teams in the Central, the Reds are doing quite well. Their pitching crushes everyone and they are third in hitting, but not too far off from the Pirates for the second spot. The Cubs hitting prospects on their own would have been good enough to rank as the 7th best farm system around. That’s incredible. The Reds didn’t have anything quite as impressive as that, but they do rank tops among all teams in baseball in the pitching department with the 591 points handed out for their group. The Brewers had as many prospects listed as the Cardinals and the Pirates, but the quality wasn’t the same as they were well behind both of those organizations in the rankings.

Here’s how each organization breaks down among all 30 teams in Major League Baseball.