BRASSball Farm System Rankings - Part II

Simi Valley's Freddie Freeman

I received quite a bit of feedback on my initial post about the BRASSball Farm System Rankings. Most of the response was positive, but almost everyone that contacted me wanted more details on how I arrived at assigning a score to each team. Before I get into individual BRASS team breakdowns, I thought I would share a little more about my analytic process that I applied, and provide some examples.

First of all, I want to make it clear that this list is never-ending, in a way. I mean, there are always prospect lists and updates being churned out. They're being revamped all the time with new information, updates due to Arizona Fall League performance, injuries, trades, and general change of opinion by the author(s). We fellow BRASS managers just can't seem to leave our rosters alone either.

For these reasons, I've decided to keep a dedicated page for the rankings for everyone's reference. I will post the last time the list was updated, and if there was a change to the team's overall points.

With every list, there needs to be a reason why one player is ranked above the other. As I stated in my previous post, most lists rely on opinions and educational guesses. I tried to put together a system that ranks prospects and young players based on statistics and "fact." However, I would argue with myself that my system is also about opinion because of how I chose to put it together.

Player Progression

Player progression is the number one contributor when assigning a score and rank to a BRASSball team. This doesn't mean that the individual player's low score makes him any more or less desirable, or indicates that the player will be a five-tool stud or a bust. In my mind, it's simply a measurement of a prospect's value when compared to what they were projected to do: make it to the major leagues. 

A player will score higher if they were ranked as a "top prospect" prior to the previous season and advanced to the major leagues in a way that removed the player as a "prospect." The removal is based on the player's appearance on annual top prospect lists and rankings.

Here's an example of three players from Atlanta, and how they scored in this system in terms of progression: Freddie Freeman (Simi Valley), Julio Teheran (Parkland), and J.J. Hoover (North Georgia).

Freeman was awarded a significant amount of "Progression Factor" (PF) points because he had an average 2011 prospect rank of 2 and advanced to the majors in 2011. Teheran is currently the #1 prospect in the Braves' system, but he was also the #1 prospect last year. While Teheran did advance to the majors with 19 2/3 innings pitched, his appearance on every prospect ranking list in the country hurt his PF score this year. Basically, yes, he's a top prospect and is projected to be great, so his advancement to the majors in 2011 (while being highly ranked in 2011 and 2012) is not that surprising. However, he will have a significant PF score next season if he is called up at any point in 2012 and plays himself away from the "prospect" label.

In fact, if Teheran does plays enough to no longer be considered a prospect, he'll be awarded more PF points than Freeman received this year. This is because a higher-ranked prospect that makes the majors is more-likely to contribute value to his team than a lower-ranked prospect.

Hoover's ranking, on the other hand, actually declined slightly and was not called up to Atlanta to pitch last season. Therefore, he actually lost PF points. This doesn't mean Hoover isn't a prospect or won't get called up. In some cases, a MLB organization strengthened itself at the top through trades or the draft. All it means is the prospect hasn't yet contributed a positive value to the long-term outlook of the BRASSball team.

Currently, Parkland's overall score is lower than you might think. What makes my system different than your traditional organizational ranking scheme is that I'm emphasizing more of what a prospect has done recently than solely on what a prospect is proposed to do. This has value in a Strat-O-Matic league where we speculate, manage, and play in two worlds: the previous and the current Major League Baseball seasons.