Baseball America ranks Toronto Blue Jays farm system

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Toronto Blue Jays seventeen-year-old phenom shortstop Franklin Barreto. Photo Credit:

MLB Prospect Portal

Baseball America has followed up their League Top 20 Prospects list, which I covered in a mailed-in post from a Blue Jays perspective at the time, with another list that ranks MLB farm systems “poised to deliver near-term value”. The formula used by author Matt Eddy includes a weighted points system for factor such as league, position and the previously mentioned Top 20 player rankings.

How did the Toronto Blue Jays stack up? Not bad actually, which isn’t too much of a surprise after we learned they had thirteen representatives on the initial Top 20 list. Baseball America rated the Jays’ system tied for eleventh in a dead heat with the New York Mets. When I last covered BA’s player rankings, the higher levels hadn’t been announced yet but Marcus Stroman (10th in Double-A Eastern League), Aaron Sanchez (10th in High Single-A Florida State League) and Kevin Pillar (19th in International League) were also all named League Top 20 prospects.

OF D.J. Davis, 3B Mitch Nay, SS Dawel Lugo, SS Franklin Barreto were all rated in the top five in their respective leagues and LHP Chase DeJong was the highest ranking pitcher for the Blue Jays in the low minors at sixth in the Appalachian League (behind Davis, Nay and Lugo). The depth helps but a lack of immediate star power in the higher ranks probably held the Blue Jays out of the top ten.

Anthony Gose and Moises Sierra both had miserable seasons in Triple-A and don’t really qualify as “prospects” by Baseball America’s definition but both had decent enough years in Toronto to hold on to hope about their respective futures.

It’s by no means a perfect method but I think provides a nice snapshot of the state of the Toronto Blue Jays in comparison to the other teams in baseball. And despite the seemingly general consensus that the Blue Jays don’t know what they are doing within their farm system it’s nice to know that at least Baseball America feels differently, based on their most recent scores.