Major League Baseball’s offseason has been hectic so far, in case you haven’t noticed. And with six weeks to go before pitchers and catchers report, there’s still more action to come.
Much of the focus to this point has been on all of the movement among big leaguers, what with free-agent signings and teams trading their top chips to new squads. But there has been almost as much activity on the minor league front, too.
Now that 2015 is here, it’s time once again to take stock of prospects by ranking the farm systems of all 30 clubs.
As always, our rankings are based on two criteria: impact potential and depth. Since a team may have more of one than the other, it’s necessary to have more than a couple of players who project as quality big leaguers in order to have a good farm system.
One last thing to remember: Any player who is no longer prospect eligible—that is, anyone who has exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the major leagues—is not considered in their team’s ranking.
That means no Mookie Betts for the Boston Red Sox, Javier Baez for the Chicago Cubs or Taijuan Walker for the Seattle Mariners, among others who exhausted their rookie status late in the 2014 campaign.
With that in mind, here’s how all 30 farm systems stack up at the outset of 2015.