Farm System Breakdown – #9: Danimals

For an explanation on the distinction between the “Exponential” and “Linear” rankings given below, please refer to my earlier post “Farm System Primer”. I know it’s tedious, but I had just enough details that I felt needed to review, that I didn’t want to start off each Farm System Breakdown post with 4 paragraphs of jargon. And of course, any questions, feel free to inquire within.

Top 30 Rank (Exponential/Linear): 9/10
Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 9/14
Average of Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 7/8
Average Prospect Grade/Risk (Exp/Lin): 51.6/High / 44.7/High
Total Prospects: 36

Groups of 15 Rankings

Organization Prospect Rankings

MPTK = “More Players to Know” section of Handbook, DC = Depth Chart of Handbook, 21IFA = IFA signed and drafted in 2021, NL = Not listed in handbook under any sections

Summary

And we have another farm system structured very similarly to the Your Mom franchise in the Danimals farm system.

Led by top prospect Nate Pearson who has the same evaluation as Julio Rodriguez, there’s also a small contingent of quality prospects immediately following in Pepiot, Matthew Allan, Soderstrom, Abel, Kirby, Zack Thompson and Luis Gil. I left out Tejay Antone so I could address the oddity of a 45/Low prospect having such a high evaluation. I certainly think there’s something to be said for having a more “Safe” prospect, but there are so few Low grades provided in the BA Handbook, that I sometimes feel like they should be addressed differently than the Extreme, Very High, High and Medium’s of the world. Maybe an area of improvement for next season. But I digress.

I was tempted to point out that Danimals seems to have more players in the “guys” and fringy groupings in comparison to the Your Mom franchise, but truly the entirety of the difference in the exponential evaluation is almost entirely comprised of the difference in value found in each teams top 10. Those extra couple higher tiered prospects are the only thing separating these two farm systems. And this makes a lot of logical sense, as the Danimals farm is the most shallow in the league at 36 prospect eligible players. I believe this plays a huge role in the relatively high average ranking of this farm’s prospects as there simply isn’t much in the way of fluff at the bottom. And what little fluff is there seems pretty defensible.

We wrap up the first half of the farm systems with yet another team in the middle of a contention cycle. As might be expected, we saw much more quality than quantity in a series of teams that might have had a few really good pieces at the top, but quickly fell away to mediocrity after that. Maybe Kelly’s Heroes is an exception as they just seemed to be a farm system comprised of a deep collection of mediocrity. Either way, expect the next installments of the series to get much more interesting very quickly.