Yikes.

22. New York Mets

It's actually getting better here, but rebuilding a system takes years, and the Mets have really just begun to inject higher-upside talent into the system.

NL East-
Braves #16
Nationals #21
Phillies #25
Marlins #28


Yankees #10

This is all just message board fodder when no one is playing.

What you hope is that in season they climb the list rather than fall down it.

We need some bats to take some big steps forward.

We have the high-end arms, we have the arms who people expected nothing from and have outperformed their supposed ceilings to become at least somewhat interesting org depth (Schwinden, Gorski, McHugh, etc), we even have some hard-throwing recent draftees that may either continue to build behind the current crop of move quickly as strong-armed relievers, which is a spot we have been really unable to build a pipeline of unlike a lot of other organizations.

But the bats. Oh the bats. It'd be really nice to see:

-Nimmo debut in full season ball and thrive, and not take the Josh Sale route.
-Havens stay on the field and show his first round talent
-Vaughn to bounceback and go back to the helium guy he was coming into last year
-Wilmer/Puello/Aderlin/Marte to start turning their considerable talent into some big time results
-And then some unsung guys start to step up too - Lagares repeating his breakout, Muno/Evans showing themselves to be plus hitters for MIFers, maybe a catcher takes a big step forward, etc.

Not that I disagree with what you said but I don't think guys like Schwinden/McHugh really count toward grading a farm system. I think every single team in baseball has a handful of these types.

Not much to look forward to with a bottom-third farm system feeding talent onto a major league roster that is looking to shed payroll.

The clues have been there.

You make a half-season rental trade and the prospect you get back is instantly at the top of your organization's list.

That's not taking anything away from Sandy or Wheeler, but it speaks volumes about what was in place.

Another clue is that you never hear of other teams clamoring to pry prospects away from the Mets.

That's the deafening silence of people whose livelihood rests on making accurate player evaluations.

The biggest issue is that we've had plenty of early, high picks lately and haven't traded any top-end talent from the system in what seems like a decade. So there's been ample opportunity to amass talent there: theoretically, there should ONLY have been additions to the system.

Now you can say Ike graduated too quickly to ever be appreciated in these rankings, and the handling of Mejia by Omar the Great completely bungled what would have otherwise been a guy who floated a system's rankings higher. But they've really done a bad job, up and down, of building up a system while the parent team nosedived. Which is tough to do.

Wheeler would shoot to the top spot or two on a lot of team's lists, let's not kid ourselves. He's one of the games best 30 or so prospects. Harvey is right up there with him too. The problem is the drop-off after those two (and Familia, though he wouldn't be as high as Wheeler or Harvey). The organization really needs some impact bats, in particular.

I think they are more closer to middle of the pack, but oh well.

I think Sickels had Schwinden in his top 20. Gorski has been in the middle of everyone's rankings. If McHugh has another year like he did last year, I bet he'll be in there. I

They're not the lifeblood of a system by any means, but when you have that type of "depth" behind the high-end guys, I think that counts for something. You want to make sure you balance your high-ceiling guys with some high-floor guys, too. Thats when you start hearing about "deep" systems, top to bottom, that maintain themselves even if a few of the high ceiling guys bust.

I love this comment about the White Sox at the bottom:

When I mention above that its tough to tank on the major league side while simultaneously maintaining a crappy minor league system, I forget that Kenny Williams can make the impossible possible.

So there's what you don't wanna be.