Farm system rankings based on John Sickels grades

One of my favorite times of the year is when John Sickels releases all of his prospect rankings. He grades out players in each farm system and thanks to work done by quite a few individuals over the last ten years we have a general idea of what a prospects value is in terms of dollars based on grades done by Sickels and rankings by Baseball America.

When we used an AP style point system for the rankings done by Fangraphs Kiley McDaniels the Cincinnati Reds fared pretty well, coming in at #8 in baseball with their farm system. The grades handed out by John Sickels has a rather large difference from those rankings. Here’s how all of the farm systems stack up based on John Sickels grades among all of the teams in baseball.

The Reds come in ranked 18th by this metric, though the teams ranked 6th through 18th were all pretty close. The Reds pitching, the strength of their system, only ranked 11th according to this system. The hitting ranked 18th overall.

Let’s look specifically inside the division.

As expected, the Cubs are just dominating  the rankings. The Pirates are the next to show up on the list, with slightly more than HALF of the value of the Cubs farm system. The Reds follow up with the Brewers and Cardinals finishing a distant fourth and fifth in the rankings. The Cardinals seem to have no bats in their system at all. Their position player group is easily the worst among the division, less than 50% of the value from the second worst group (The Brewers pitching group). The Cubs hitting prospects has far more value than any system in the division and their pitching, at least according to Sickels, isn’t bad. The Pirates, Reds and Brewers have some balance in their system by these rankings while the Cubs and Cardinals are both heavily weighted in one direction. For the Cubs that isn’t bad, but the Cardinals aren’t looking as nice.

This system views the Reds system in a similar fashion as Keith Law did when he ranked them in a similar position overall. I think both guys are missing the boat on a few players and it’s causing the value to be lower than where the Fangraphs rankings have the team.

Here’s how all of the systems stack up: