Friday, July 19, 2013
by: Ben Embry
With the All-star break and Draft signing deadline behind us, now seems like a good time to put together the mid-season 2013 farm system rankings.
In rankings previous, I relied heavily on a spreadsheet I had developed that used a lot of objective, readily-available data. The spreadsheet issued a grade in the same manner that we're accustomed to from our school days. I have moved away from relying on it and instead use a more subjective approach, at least at the top of the board. I always knew that minor league performance can only tell you so much if not outright lie to you. I still use it as a tiebreaker for judgement calls further down the board. And since I do still find it interesting, I'll actually post the players' scores at the bottom in case anyone's interested in seeing them.
Ok, here are the top 25 players in the Yankee farm system:
| Rank | Name | Position | Score |
| 1 | Gary Sanchez | C | 86 |
| 2 | Rafael de Paula | SP | 89 |
| 3 | Mason Williams | OF | 85 |
| 4 | J.R. Murphy | C | 86 |
| 5 | Jose Ramirez | SP | 87 |
| 6 | Tyler Austin | OF | 87 |
| 7 | Slade Heathcott | OF | 82 |
| 8 | Manny Banuelos | SP | 82 |
| 9 | Aaron Judge | OF | N/A |
| 10 | Eric Jagielo | 3B | 87 |
| 11 | Ian Clarkin | SP | N/A |
| 12 | Ty Hensley | SP | 87 |
| 13 | Jose Campos | SP | 86 |
| 14 | Gabe Encinas | SP | 76 |
| 15 | Mark Montgomery | RP | 90 |
| 16 | Ramon Flores | OF | 85 |
| 17 | Nik Turley | SP | 84 |
| 18 | Zoilo Almonte | OF | 83 |
| 19 | Corban Joseph | 2B | 83 |
| 20 | Corey Black | SP | 82 |
| 21 | Angelo Gumbs | 2B | 78 |
| 22 | Brett Marshall | SP | 77 |
| 23 | Dietrich Enns | SP | 88 |
| 24 | Greg Bird | 1B | 86 |
| 25 | Mike O'Neill | OF | 78 |
Sanchez and de Paula were the easiest to place. Sanchez is clearly number one and de Paula is clearly number two. That's not only my opinion but seemingly the industry consensus, (if you consider being in the top 50 list of Baseball America and Keith Law to be an adequate sampling of industry opinion).
From there it gets a little murky. I feel like Williams, Murphy, and Ramirez all have decent shots at appearing in the second half of Top 100 overall lists, thus is the reason they follow GS and RdP. Williams was an easy selection for Top 100 lists prior to the season but has had a down year. But he's picked it up a but lately and reputation/tools helps him maintain Top 100 status I feel like. Murphy and Ramirez are climbers. Murphy didn't get a lot of Top 100 love in the Spring (or any honestly) but was still a prospect and has had a fantastic year. So much so that there's a loud clamoring from fans to promote him to the big club, even though he was just promoted to AAA fairly recently. Regarding Ramirez, he was a fringy Top 100 guy in the Spring and has really played well enough to take that step forward.
The next cut of guys for me is three players who have been Top 100 guys in recent history and have either played their way out or injuries have brought them down. Tyler Austin was my favorite prospect coming into 2013 based mainly on production. This guy has always hit for power and average and I expected it to continue. Unfortunately it hasn't, although his recent wrist injury may be a revelation as to why. And because he's not as toolsy as Williams, he has to perform to justify high rankings. Heathcott has similarly underperformed but has not been terrible so it's tough to drop him far overall. Finally Banuelos is someone who was ranked very high previously before injuries derailed what seemed like a sure and quick track to the Bronx. He's still going to be relatively young when he comes back from Tommy John next Spring and the injury is one that pitchers rebound from with a high success rate. So I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt until the Spring, when if he either underperforms or is still hurt I'll have to move him down accordingly.
After that comes 4 guys drafted in the past two years who have a lot of talent but short track records. Judge, Jagielo, and Clarkin are all 2013 draftees who were selected in the first round and ranked highly going into the draft. Their order here reflects their order in my predraft rankings. There was a little debate personally as to whether Hensley should be ranked ahead of Clarkin or vice versa. I went with Clarkin over Hensley for the fact that they're on the same level (Rookie ball) while Clarkin is over 18 months younger. Both are battling injuries but Clarkin's seems less serious. Advantage Clarkin.
Compared to pre-season rankings, the biggest climbers are Murphy (+15), de Paula (+6), and Turley (+5). The biggest falls were Gumbs (-14), Marshall (-12), and Bird (-8). That doesn't include Jordan Cote, Dante Bichette, Cito Culver, and Austin Aune who all fell off the list. Bichette and Culver fell off due to extremely poor performances while Cote and Aune are more of an adjustment of my expectations. Those guys could both easily be back in October.
Since I mentioned those who fell off, I should probably mention those who took their place. Judge, Jagielo, Clarkin, and O'Neill are all new because they were just drafted this year. Enns and Encinas appear because they have both performed extremely well and caught not only my eye but the eyes of some writers I like.
Some guys that just missed the cut are Luis Torrens, Alexander Palma, and Luis Severino. Reason being is they're all still really green but I am really intrigued by all of them. They're all three playing really well and if they can keep it up they may force their way onto the list.
In general, I'm somewhat pleased with the current state of the system. I like the depth and guys taking steps forward like de Paula, Murphy, and Ramirez are always nice. I think the system has a lot of intriguing players down in the deeper part of the system like the rookie leagues and hopefully we see some of them take steps forward. I am a little disappointed in the way the guys who started the year on top have just kind of stagnated. Even Sanchez has really just been treading water. If one or two of them turn it around in the second half, it would make it really difficult to find something to complain about with this system.
For those looking for Dellin Betances or David Adams, they're not there for a reason. I don't consider a player a prospect if he has either lost his major league rookie status or is 25 years or older. Both DB and DA are disqualified for the latter. And on this topic, Zoilo Almonte is close to losing his rookie eligibility but because he hasn't yet, he made the list.
Ok, here are those objective statistic scores I mentioned earlier. It's based on three factors: Age/experience, performance, and height. The A/E factor takes into consideration what level the prospect is playing in relation to their age. So a 20 year old in A+ ball scores better than a 20 year old in SS ball. Performance takes their last three stops and scores it, taking into consideration what league they're playing in. For example, GCL tends to be hitter friendly. So a pitcher performing well in the GCL gets a little bump while a hitter performing well gets brought down a little. Finally, the height factor was added recently because, even though it is far from telling the whole story, it does give some insight into projectability, which is not an unimportant factor given they're all still prospects. It receives the lightest weighting of the 3 factors.
Now I've got what I think is an interesting (or quirky, whatever) way to look at this and that is by age group. I actually scored over 60 players and have sorted them by (here's where the quirkiness comes in), theoretical high school graduation year. You're probably asking yourself "what in the hell is theoretical high school graduation year?" I'll tell you: THSGY is the year a player should have theoretically graduated high school based on the date they were born, where September 1st is the cutoff birthdate to start school. For instance, my son was born last October and would thus miss the cutoff for starting school in 2017. The years are theoretical for two main reasons. 1) some of these international signees aren't even old enough to graduate HS. 2) some players may have graduated HS later than their birthdate would indicate. For example, Ty Hensley was born 7/30/93, which puts him in the 2011 class by theory. However, he actually graduated in 2012. But while he will often be comped to other pitchers that graduated that year, (like Lance McCullers for example), I think actual age is more relevant than when you started your career or graduated high school. But because I started a whole "school grading system", it seemed natural and fun to group them in this way. (BTW, this is by no means judgement on why Ty didn't actually graduate in 2011. It's none of my business and I couldn't care less quite frankly.)
I find a player's age to be a very compelling factor in their status as a prospect thus am interested in how they compare to other players their age.
| Year | Name | POS | Rnk | Score |
| 2007 | Zoilo Almonte | OF | 18 | 83 |
| 2007 | Corban Joseph | 2B | 19 | 83 |
| 2008 | Jose Ramirez | SP | 5 | 87 |
| 2008 | Mark Montgomery | RP | 15 | 90 |
| 2008 | Nik Turley | SP | 17 | 84 |
| 2008 | Brett Marshall | SP | 22 | 77 |
| 2008 | Peter O'Brien | C | 82 | |
| 2008 | Zach Nuding | SP | 76 | |
| 2009 | Rafael de Paula | SP | 2 | 89 |
| 2009 | Mason Williams | OF | 3 | 85 |
| 2009 | J.R. Murphy | C | 4 | 86 |
| 2009 | Slade Heathcott | OF | 7 | 82 |
| 2009 | Manny Banuelos | SP | 8 | 82 |
| 2009 | Corey Black | SP | 20 | 82 |
| 2009 | Dietrich Enns | SP | 23 | 88 |
| 2009 | Nick Goody | RP | 88 | |
| 2009 | Caleb Smith | SP | 83 | |
| 2009 | Rob Refsnyder | 2B | 82 | |
| 2009 | Giovanny Gallegos | SP | 80 | |
| 2009 | Brandon Thomas | OF | 75 | |
| 2010 | Tyler Austin | OF | 6 | 87 |
| 2010 | Aaron Judge | OF | 9 | N/A |
| 2010 | Eric Jagielo | 3B | 10 | 87 |
| 2010 | Jose Campos | SP | 13 | 86 |
| 2010 | Gabe Encinas | SP | 14 | 76 |
| 2010 | Ramon Flores | OF | 16 | 85 |
| 2010 | Mike O'Neill | OF | 25 | 78 |
| 2010 | Ben Gamel | OF | 83 | |
| 2010 | Cesar Vargas | SP | 83 | |
| 2010 | Cale Coshow | SP | 81 | |
| 2010 | Ravel Santana | OF | 80 | |
| 2010 | Cito Culver | SS | 76 | |
| 2010 | Evan Rutckyj | SP | 76 | |
| 2011 | Gary Sanchez | C | 1 | 86 |
| 2011 | Ty Hensley | SP | 12 | 87 |
| 2011 | Angelo Gumbs | 2B | 21 | 78 |
| 2011 | Greg Bird | 1B | 24 | 86 |
| 2011 | Omar Luis | SP | 85 | |
| 2011 | Jordan Cote | SP | 84 | |
| 2011 | Rookie Davis | SP | 84 | |
| 2011 | Caleb Frare | SP | 83 | |
| 2011 | Angel Rincon | SP | 80 | |
| 2011 | Jake Cave | OF | 78 | |
| 2011 | Dante Bichette, Jr. | 3B | 78 | |
| 2011 | Daniel Camarena | SP | 75 | |
| 2011 | David Palladino | SP | 75 | |
| 2011 | Hayden Sharp | SP | 73 | |
| 2012 | Luis Severino | SP | 84 | |
| 2012 | Austin Aune | OF | 75 | |
| 2012 | Dayton Dawe | SP | 72 | |
| 2013 | Ian Clarkin | SP | 11 | N/A |
| 2013 | Tyler Wade | SS | 90 | |
| 2013 | Gosuke Katoh | 2B | 90 | |
| 2013 | Abiatal Avelino | SS | 82 | |
| 2013 | Kendall Coleman | OF | 76 | |
| 2013 | Miguel Andujar | 3B | 75 | |
| 2013 | Jordan Floyd | SP | N/A | |
| 2013 | Drew Bridges | 3B | N/A | |
| 2014 | Luis Torrens | C | 83 | |
| 2014 | Thairo Estrada | SS | 83 | |
| 2014 | Alexander Palma | OF | 78 | |
| 2014 | Yancarlos Baez | SS | N/A | |
| 2015 | Yonauris Rodriguez | SS | N/A |
I actually refer to this table as "The Yearbook". I think of that class of 2007 as my Senior class because they're about to graduate one way or the other. Its pretty light, which is understandable. This group should, by my estimation, technically be "graduated" to the bigs by now. And funny enough Zoilo IS in the bigs right now but because he still has rookie status he's on this list. And Joseph had a cup of coffee with the team in June.
The class of 2008 Juniors are well represented with 4 of my top 25 spots and they're all pitchers. The class of 2009 Sophomores is LOA-DED, with 5 of my top 10 and 12 of my top 25. The class of 2010 Freshman aren't too shabby either with 2 in the Top 10 and 7 in the top 25.
Ok, I'll come back and do a postseason top 25 at the end of September most likely. Anyone who wants to discuss or ridicule, feel free to email me at info@thebeonxempire.com or tweet me @thebronxempire. Take care and thanks for reading.
