Orioles farm system ranked no. 2

[Frobby]

23 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You mentioned that sometimes the 40 WAR could be the #5 prospect.  My point is, that in a trade scenario like this, it may not always been the guys ranked 1 And 2 that you make the deal for. 
 

In the example I brought up, the Os, you do and you might do that with Seattle because of Kelenic and Rodriguez.  But maybe you like Gilbert more then Kelenic, so you take him instead.

I just think it happens a good amount where 2 prospects from a teams top 20 outperform the rest of the top 20.  So many guys just don’t make it or become anything.  

I’d say top 2 > next 18 more often than top 1 > next 9.    

[Sports Guy]

Just now, Frobby said:

I’d say top 2 > next 18 more often than top 1 > next 9.    

That’s probably accurate.  

[Pickles]

32 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You mentioned that sometimes the 40 WAR could be the #5 prospect.  My point is, that in a trade scenario like this, it may not always been the guys ranked 1 And 2 that you make the deal for. 
 

In the example I brought up, the Os, you do and you might do that with Seattle because of Kelenic and Rodriguez.  But maybe you like Gilbert more then Kelenic, so you take him instead.

I just think it happens a good amount where 2 prospects from a teams top 20 outperform the rest of the top 20.  So many guys just don’t make it or become anything.  

Ok, so we are having two different conversations. 

That's fine.  I guess that's why you took such exception to my phrasing.

I whole-heartedly agree with you that with the benefit of hindsight, and talking about players and not prospects, it isn't rare at all.

[Pickles]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’d say top 2 > next 18 more often than top 1 > next 9.    

That's yet another interesting thought experiment.

I'd probably agree with this because prospect #2 is more likely to outperform prospects 11-20 than prospect #1 is to outperform 1-9, largely because of the drop between the values of 2-10 vs. 11-20.

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Ok, so we are having two different conversations. 

That's fine.  I guess that's why you took such exception to my phrasing.

I whole-heartedly agree with you that with the benefit of hindsight, and talking about players and not prospects, it isn't rare at all.

I’m not talking with the benefit of hindsight.  I’m saying that not everyone would take the #1 and #2 ranked prospects in a discussion like this all the time.

Sure it’s the case with hindsight, which is why I said you were wrong about the rare comment but I’m saying I could have easily see scenarios where you don’t always take the 1 and 2 ranked guys…I mentioned this because you said sometimes it’s the #5 guy who gets the most WAR.  That’s true but there may be situations where he is one of the 2 guys you trade for, even if he’s not ranked in the top 2.

[Frobby]

19 hours ago, Frobby said:

There used to be a website (I’m blanking on the name) that had historical data on how much value was within each team’s farm system at the end of any given year (judged retroactively, by rWAR).    One probably could have looked at that to answer this question.   Unfortunately, that site no longer exists.   

Again, I think it depends what you are measuring.  Excess value during the years of team control?   Total value over a player’s career?   I think the answer using those two measures wouldn’t necessarily be the same.   

We know from my other thread about the value of a draft that the average WAR produced by a draft is about 23.   We also know that about 30 % of WAR comes from foreign players who weren’t drafted, so make it 33 WAR/year entering the farm system.   The average average player who makes the majors probably takes 3-5 years to get there, though the great ones may only take 1-2 years.   So I’m going to say, finger to the wind, that an average farm system probably has about 100 WAR in it at any given year, and probably 80% of that comes from the top 10 players in the system.  So, if you have a 40+ WAR player in your system, he’s probably worth as much as the next 9 guys combined.   I don’t know how many 40+ WAR guys are lurking in the minors at any given time, but if I had to guess, I’d say 10-15 (of whom 3-5 graduate to the majors each year).   So, I’d guess that roughly 30-50% of the time, a team has a player in its system who is worth more than the next 9 guys combined in terms of total WAR.   All of this is a pretty rough estimate, but I think it’s good enough to say it’s probably not “exceedingly rare” to have a guy in the farm system who will produce more WAR than the next 9 guys combined, though it probably is true less than half the time and maybe less than a third of the time.   

At some point I may try to do a bit more research to confirm this.   


 

So, I was able to dredge up the name of the website that used to value all the farm systems, called thebaseballgauge.com.   It’s no longer operating, but I wrote a post about it last year that said from 2000-14 the median value of a farm system was 104.6 rWAR.  That’s probably a little light since many players who were in the minors in that time frame are still playing in the majors today.   The best farm system of all time, per this list, was the 1989 Rangers system, that ended up producing 433 rWAR.  

Also, the median number of players in a team’s farm system that eventually reached the majors was 36.

Here’s a link to the post, which included a bunch of other details.    

 

[Pickles]

18 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I’m not talking with the benefit of hindsight.  I’m saying that not everyone would take the #1 and #2 ranked prospects in a discussion like this all the time.

Sure it’s the case with hindsight, which is why I said you were wrong about the rare comment but I’m saying I could have easily see scenarios where you don’t always take the 1 and 2 ranked guys…I mentioned this because you said sometimes it’s the #5 guy who gets the most WAR.  That’s true but there may be situations where he is one of the 2 guys you trade for, even if he’s not ranked in the top 2.

But then that would be their prospect ranking, which doesn't change anything.  It's still a matter of preference.  

[Hallas]

I mean, prospect rankings 

5 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I’m not talking with the benefit of hindsight.  I’m saying that not everyone would take the #1 and #2 ranked prospects in a discussion like this all the time.

Sure it’s the case with hindsight, which is why I said you were wrong about the rare comment but I’m saying I could have easily see scenarios where you don’t always take the 1 and 2 ranked guys…I mentioned this because you said sometimes it’s the #5 guy who gets the most WAR.  That’s true but there may be situations where he is one of the 2 guys you trade for, even if he’s not ranked in the top 2.

I'm a bit confused, are we talking top prospects or top draft picks?  Because it's a big mistake to conflate them.  In the last 10-15 years the very vast majority of players on top prospect lists, especially the top 5 for position players, have gone on to have very productive MLB careers worthy of their place on the top prospects list. 

[Sports Guy]

19 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I mean, prospect rankings 

I'm a bit confused, are we talking top prospects or top draft picks?  Because it's a big mistake to conflate them.  In the last 10-15 years the very vast majority of players on top prospect lists, especially the top 5 for position players, have gone on to have very productive MLB careers worthy of their place on the top prospects list. 

Prospects, not draft picks.

[Pickles]

7 hours ago, Pickles said:

But then that would be their prospect ranking, which doesn't change anything.  It's still a matter of preference.  

You get what I'm saying here though @Sports Guy?

There are twenty prospects.  Legit ones.  Good enough to get on a Org top 20 list.  (And yes that value does vary.)

You get to pick two of them.  Any two of them.  We'll call them 1-2 because that is your preference.

I get the other 18.

I believe I'll get the better value the majority of the time.  One could probably go stronger than that.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Pickles said:

You get what I'm saying here though @Sports Guy?

There are twenty prospects.  Legit ones.  Good enough to get on a Org top 20 list.  (And yes that value does vary.)

You get to pick two of them.  Any two of them.  We'll call them 1-2 because that is your preference.

I get the other 18.

I believe I'll get the better value the majority of the time.  One could probably go stronger than that.

I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying it’s not rare imo…I’m guessing it happens more than you seem to think.

[Pickles]

6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying it’s not rare imo…I’m guessing it happens more than you seem to think.

Ok, well we're talking about the same thing here at least.

I guess a lot of it depends on how good someone is at picking talent.

Still, Frobby's outline suggest less than half, or even a third, of the time there are two guys who will have more value than the 18.

Let's just cut the difference and say if you pick PERFECTLY you'll be correct 40% of the time.

Well, I haven't seen anybody pick well enough that those odds don't drop real fast and real drastically.

I think in absence of a global top 10 guy, you probably have to take the other 18 except in rare specific circumstances.

(I realize when you brought this up you were talking about Adley and Grayson, who are both global top 10 guys.  And I think this O's system might be one of the exceptions to the rule.

[Sports Guy]

57 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Ok, well we're talking about the same thing here at least.

I guess a lot of it depends on how good someone is at picking talent.

Still, Frobby's outline suggest less than half, or even a third, of the time there are two guys who will have more value than the 18.

Let's just cut the difference and say if you pick PERFECTLY you'll be correct 40% of the time.

Well, I haven't seen anybody pick well enough that those odds don't drop real fast and real drastically.

I think in absence of a global top 10 guy, you probably have to take the other 18 except in rare specific circumstances.

(I realize when you brought this up you were talking about Adley and Grayson, who are both global top 10 guys.  And I think this O's system might be one of the exceptions to the rule.

The other thing is, even if the top 2 guys don’t beat out the other 18, the question is how much better are those 18 guys?  If it’s 50 WAR for the top 2 and it’s 60 WAR for the other 18, I still want the top 2.  I can find that additional 10 WAR.  It’s so hard to find that elite talent.

[Pickles]

33 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

The other thing is, even if the top 2 guys don’t beat out the other 18, the question is how much better are those 18 guys?  If it’s 50 WAR for the top 2 and it’s 60 WAR for the other 18, I still want the top 2.  I can find that additional 10 WAR.  It’s so hard to find that elite talent.

This is true too.  There is opportunity cost with each roster spot.

[Paul in Virginia]

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