Farm System Breakdown – #6: Rollin’ Goats

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): 6/5
Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 6/4
Average of Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 6/5
Average Prospect Grade/Risk (Exp/Lin): 52.2/High / 47.3/High
Total Prospects: 55

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

For the next entry in the series we visit the Rollin’ Goats franchise, checking in as the 6th best farm system in the CPL. The gap between #8 and #7 is a pretty big divide, but when comparing the #7 and #6 farms against one another, there just feels like there should be a bigger gap then what the raw numbers suggest.

Technically, this farm actually is lacking in an “Elite” prospect, as both Abrams and Luciano fall into an awkward in-between group that’s just below the elite tier. This might account for why the gap between #6 and #7 wasn’t as dramatic as I expected. Regardless, having two 70 grade talents is plenty impressive for any farm and with Dylan Carlson following immediately after that, there’s no shortage of top tier names to lead off the rankings. After Carlson, you take a step down to the next tier, and you find a very impressive 11 names. I’m not going to list them all, as that seems silly considering the volume, but I will point out that Jazz Chisholm, Ryan Weathers and Kwang-Hyun Kim are just some of the names that fall into this tier. After this, you get a surprisingly short list of “guys”, as there are only 10 prospects in the next tier including Daniel Espino, Austin Cox and Mark Vientos. But, here’s where we get truly crazy, as we have a whopping 24 prospects that qualify for the fringy/role player tier, with only 7 more prospects to fill out the rankings. Of these 7, only two didn’t make their franchises top 30, one of which is the other Burdi, who maintains just as much intrigue as his brother. I will limit myself to 3 names for the sake of brevity from this latter portion of the farm, and say that I find players such as Micker Adolfo, Kyren Paris and Canaan Smith to all be intriguing.

At 55 prospects, this is the longest list we’ve discussed so far, and unfortunately for me, it’s only going to get longer from here. I’m definitely going to need to find a way to communicate the tier breakdowns more efficiently, as there’s just a lot to say when you have so much talent in one place. Ultimately, the Rollin’ Goats have a very impressive farm, and even though some of the top names are set to graduate this season or next, I expect that the overall health of this system shouldn’t suffer too much. I’m not sure what picks the Goats still have for the next 3 drafts, but even if they continue to surpass expectations and find themselves in the thick of the playoffs and thus dilute their draft position, I think this system will still be just fine. And, if they do struggle and find themselves with top 8 picks in the near future, all the more talent to stock up on. Maybe even enough to push for top 4 as some of the elite farms in the CPL start to lose value due to graduations.

Playoff bound in 2021 or not, the future is bright for the Rollin’ Goats franchise.