2023 National Rankings (in season)

The fact that I didn’t agree with it has literally nothing to do with it, it’s that it doesn’t say anything of any substance at all. You could copy and paste that quote into any article about any farm system.

I actually wouldn’t even say I disagree with it because there’s really nothing to disagree with. Of course they have volatile pieces that might not actualize, that’s literally what prospects are. So what he’s saying is technically correct but also, again, not substantive at all.

Does any other system have a website that could be considered comparable to soxprospects? I’ve seen far less sophisticated sites for sure, but nothing that would be considered in the same league.

I ask that here for 2 reasons -

1. Who cares what the national outlets think? There is no question that the guys who run this site (together with many of the frequent commenters on these threads ) have a better pulse on the system than any of these national writers. From my seat (and I’m nothing more than an armchair quarterback that reads too much), this is the best that the Sox system has been since at least before the Sale trade and maybe longer. That is, I am, and I think a lot of guys that frequent this site (correct me if I’m wrong) are, very excited in one way or about about much of the top 60. That says a heckuva lot more than whatever ESPN or MLB.com has to say about it.

2. The rankings here must be better than MLB or ESPN. To be clear, I think it’s mostly a crapshoot in any case, but no other media outlet spends nearly as much time/thought/discourse/data analysis, as the collective that makes this site great. (I.e. the guys who actually run the site, the guys who make comments in an unofficial role, and the commenters who criticize/support/question the stuff that is posted (the last part is important too)). If you just look at the difference across sites of the rankings of just OUR system, it’s pretty clear that it’s more than difference of opinion. Now apply that to all of the systems across baseball, and the variance is too extreme for an organization ranking to be much more than clickbait. (I still click, it’s fun to read.)

I think the national guys may have a better pulse on the relative value of the top 50 or 100 guys (at least for trade value purposes), but to think that Kiley, or Law, or anyone else, really, can objectively rank the value of the Sox 10-60 prospects against Baltimore, or St. Louis, or Los Angeles feels crazy to me.

That is, it’s a great time to buy season tickets, the future looks bright. Doesn’t matter if CBS sport line has us at 1st or 27th.

I'm not sure grouping Bleis and Rafaela together as "wait-and-see types" makes any sense. One is a high-ceiling teenager in A ball who just missed the better part of a season and the other is a high-floor guy in AAA who is likely to make his major league debut either later this year or early next year.

Respectfully, I disagree with this. It's sector analysis just like one reads in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc.

The tools at his or other people's disposal who do this - and several of them are single-person rankings - include video, live scouting and conversations with scouts and front office execs, all of which allow him to gather information, examine common statements or data and then extrapolate out a series of opinions.

What would be ridiculous would be if he or Law or Longenhagen or anyone else who does this for a living just makes it up as he goes along. That's clearly not the case.

Ten people can see the same movie and all of them can have different opinions.

I mean they can have different opinions about movies, but if someone's doing quick blurb about the best films of 1991 and they categorize Terminator 2 and Prince of Tides together for some reason then I think it's okay to say that the critic who wrote it did a questionable job and maybe doesn't have proper familiarity with one or both of those movies. That doesn't mean every piece needs to be deeply analytical - if you're going to get mad at people who reduce rankings to a paragraph, then I'd encourage you to read analysis rather than rankings, which are reductionist by nature. That said, just because something is a simple overview doesn't make it necessarily correct. I agree with jmei's view that Rafaela and Bleis shouldn't be lumped together.

Criticism of that specific note aside, as one of the guys who does help run the site, I think some of you are giving a short shrift to a lot of the guys who cover prospects nationally. While they might not have gotten a deep look at, say, Boston's and Los Angeles's #15 prospects, they've seen a lot of guys in those range and they're very comfortable and very well-researched when they say, for example, that organization A is much deeper in the 15-to-30 range than organization B. They really do see a lot of guys and work together and take their work extremely seriously.

To confirm, I’m not mad at anyone . I support all of these guys - I appreciate what they do, and I think they generally put out a great product.

My larger point is that these national org rankings are not very meaningful, and I am pretty confident that it’s much bigger than a difference of opinion.

Just thinking about it analytically, it would take a week of work to have a 1 minute conversation about each of the top 60 prospects on each team, or 5 weeks for a 5 minute conversation about those same players. That doesn’t include time for writing articles, independent data analysis, travel to games, Twitter banter, etc.; and the season is only 4 months long (I.e., by the time you’ve gotten through 1800 prospects, the list has materially changed, and relative player values have changed). There just isn’t enough time to keep up with it all in a meaningful way. So these lists necessarily are a combination of 1. The writers preferences for groups of the most elite guys, and 2. anecdotes (which are probably stale) that have been conveyed to the writer about each organization.

It’s still very helpful and enjoyable to read, but it doesn’t really paint a picture of how good the Red Sox system is right now. (At least for me, but I’m exceptionally cynical, I’ll blame that on law school.)

Yes, you will, which is one of the reasons (along with differential weighting for pitching prospects vs. position player prospects) why Fangraphs' rankings differ so much from the more qualitative ones. 

Especially since "What About Bob" was a cinematic masterpiece that will be studied by directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, cinephiles and Dr. Phil for decades to come.

Also, if you take a look at the Top 30 in 1991 by revenue and compare them with any Top 30 in the last 5 years, you'll see how crap the film industry's product has become.

I don’t see what’s not objective about saying “I like the depth in the system, which I think Fangraphs captures better than the others; Kiley’s quick blurb on the system doesn’t really make sense to me, since Bleis and Rafaela are very different types of prospect.” And it’s not like nobody in this thread has said they don’t like the way Fangraphs does their org rankings.

Seems similar to what my my linear algebra prof in college did with our grades - throw out the highest and lowest grades and use the mean of the rest for a grade.

Other than Lester, and he had the inside track on that, what top end arms did he sign?