ESPN prospect guru Keith Law thinks the Yankees’ farm system is “trending up”, but still not ready to be cultivated. Thanks to a strong 2013 draft and aggressive foray into the international market, Law was more optimistic about the Bronx Bombers’ stockpile of prospects, but still ranked the team’s minor league system toward the bottom third of the league.
Keith Law’s Yearly Organizational Rankings for AL East, 2009-2015
Source: ESPN.com
One small consolation in Law’s rankings is the relative position of the Yankees’ A.L. East counterparts. With the exception of the Red Sox, who maintained their top-5 billing, every other team in the division was ranked toward the bottom third. Still, that’s not likely to appease Yankee fans, especially those who have bought into a much more positive view of the franchise’s minor leagues. To them, Law’s rankings will probably be dismissed as nothing more than “typical ESPN bias” against the Yankees, but that ignores the fact that Law ranked the team within the top-10 from 2011 to 2013. If anything, Law’s track record regarding the Yankees is one of over-rating the franchise’s farm system.
Keith Law’s Top-10 Farm System Rankings, 2015
Source: ESPN.com
Law’s top-10 remained mostly intact from last year, although there was some jockeying for position within the first five slots. In the bottom of half of the top-10, there were three newcomers, including the Braves and Nationals, who catapulted from 22 and 18, respectively, in last year’s ranking. Meanwhile, the Royals, Padres, and Orioles each saw their stock drop precipitously, led by Baltimore, which plummeted below the Yankees into 22nd place.
Prospect rankings are highly subjective and speculative, as the fluidity in Law’s annual progress reports illustrates. That’s one reason why Yankee fans shouldn’t take the team’s poor showing in prospect rankings to heart. However, the great uncertainty that goes with evaluating prospects is not unique to third-party evaluators. The same difficultly applies to teams themselves. That’s why organizations, and their fans, need to avoid placing too much stock in prospects. Trying to build success from the bottom up is a very difficult task. Granted, the process can be rewarding, and cheaper, when it pans out, but relying on young players as the foundation for sustained success is a very risky proposition, which is something teams like the Yankees, who have the resources to attack roster building from many avenues (including high priced free agents), need to consider before penciling prospects into their future plans.
Go back over any ten year period, and notice how good the “draft experts” are at actually being consistently good. They are in the realm of stockbrokers, brilliant when they hit one, but all their misses are forgotten. I think that judging a pitcher before he’s at least 25 is silly. That age is the “True Sykle” of pitchers careers. Few heavily worked pitchers before they are twentyfive years old make it to thirty. Same with catchers. And many pitchers don’t even learn to pitch until they are in their late twenties. It’s nice that the Yanks have a lot of “great kids”, but Mother Nature is so very cruel….