Farm System Breakdown – #8: The Big Hurts

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): 8/9
Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 8/8
Average of Total Rank (Exp/Lin): 9/12
Average Prospect Grade/Risk (Exp/Lin): 50.7/High / 38.7/High
Total Prospects: 47

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

Hey hey, now this is a farm system. Structurally speaking, it’s more or less the same as the previous 3-4 farms we’ve looked at. You have an elite prospect, followed by a handful of higher end prospects, followed by “guys” and fringy pieces for another 20 or so slots. The distinguishing factor though is that the talent at the top seems to be of a higher pedigree than what we have seen so far.

You have the standard that we will see going forward in the elite prospect in Sixto Sanchez at the top. But after that, the likes of Brailyn Marquez, Casey Mize, Ryan Jeffers and Matthew Liberatore are extremely valuable pieces to have in your 2nd tier. Crochet and Groome contribute to round up the upper tiers of this farm. Like I mentioned earlier, the rest of the farm is fairly typical of what we’ve seen up to this point, and you have highlights such as Pavin Smith, Anthony Siegler, Kaprielian, Jahmai, Beard, Delvin Perez and Torii Hunter Jr. And lastly, I can’t help but mention the low-light of Daz Cameron. How far the mighty have fallen.

This is a solid, if still top-heavy, farm system. However, by my estimates, 5 of the top 10 prospects in this farm are set to graduate in 2021, with most of the rest not far behind. At the beginning of the season, The Big Hurts were projected to be a playoff contender, and while I still believe that to be true, their rough start to 2021 has highlighted the biggest weakness of the franchise; depth. While their prospect graduations will help with that issue, many of them were already taken into account when projecting 2021. As a result, while we should reasonably expect The Big Hurts franchise to drop in these rankings, perhaps greatly so, they may need to make yet more moves to properly fill out an MLB roster that has some of the most exciting youngsters in the game today. The upside, if The Big Hurts continues to struggle with injury problems, this farm may be propped up by the subsequent high draft picks that would result.

I still expect The Big Hurts to be a playoff contender in the short and long term. Four bad weeks do not do much to change my mind on the extremely high quality of talent that this system houses at the MLB level. From a farm system perspective though, this franchise is definitively on the way down, and will likely bottom out in the bottom 4 of the CPL within the next 2-3 years.