BA: Nats (pre-Gio trade) had the #1 Farm System

[Frobby]

I saw a blurb in the Post today that the BA Prospect Handbook came out and it ranked the Nats as having the best farm system in baseball. According to the blurb, BA went to press before the Gio trade that involved 4 prospects, but Jim Callis says that even post-trade, the Nats would be ranked between 5th and 10th. And, the Nats were ranked 30th 5 years ago. It just goes to show that a lot can happen in 5 years.

[CharmCityLights]

How low were the Rangers back then? Depending on the list you look at, they are around 3rd now.

[allstar1579]

I saw a blurb in the Post today that the BA Prospect Handbook came out and it ranked the Nats as having the best farm system in baseball. According to the blurb, BA went to press before the Gio trade that involved 4 prospects, but Jim Callis says that even post-trade, the Nats would be ranked between 5th and 10th. And, the Nats were ranked 30th 5 years ago. It just goes to show that a lot can happen in 5 years.

That's crazy, I did a pretty thorough up and down of their system doing a top 10 for Exile on the Alexandria, and I thought after #5 it got fairly week. I was just putting guys in the 7-10 spots because there was no one left.

Tells me BA does things REALLY top-heavy. I know they are in love with Rendon, pairing him with Harper and a couple lesser prospects could get it up into the high teens I could see, but I don't think it's anywhere near deep enough without those other guys to crack the top 10. Even with them I'd have a hard time putting them up there above a couple other teams. I'd have to dig in and check on some guys to be sure which though.

[andrewochs615]

Guess that's what happens when you suck enough for 2 years in a row and get lucky with can't piss draft prospects. Man one of those years I wish the O's would of said screw it and just get the number 1 pick.

[ChaosLex]

Guess that's what happens when you suck enough for 2 years in a row and get lucky with can't piss draft prospects. Man one of those years I wish the O's would of said screw it and just get the number 1 pick.

[SrMeowMeow]

Replace Harper and Strasburg with two good 5-10 overall picks those two seasons and their team is orders of magnitude worse. In some sense, they got lucky with their timing.

[Frobby]

Replace Harper and Strasburg with two good 5-10 overall picks those two seasons and their team is orders of magnitude worse. In some sense, they got lucky with their timing.

Just so it's clear, Strasburg isn't a prospect, so BA didn't take him into account in ranking their farm system. But yes, the Nats picked two very good years to be the worst team in MLB. BA is grading players on a 40-80 scale in this year's Handbook, and Harper is the only 80 in the book.

[Stotle]

Replace Harper and Strasburg with two good 5-10 overall picks those two seasons and their team is orders of magnitude worse. In some sense, they got lucky with their timing.

Strasburg isn't taken into consideration -- he's not a prospect.

Regardless of whether anyone agrees with BA's ranking of the Nats' system vs other orgs, no one can make the argument that WAS was ranked #1 solely because of Harper, and would be markedly worse if they had a different Top 100 prospect in his spot.