In the middle of writing my first post in my Farm System Breakdown series, I realized I simply have too many caveats and clarifications to paste into the first paragraph of any sort of normal post. So, I have opted to create this masterpiece to serve as a reference for the changes I made to my approach this season. I hope you enjoy this dry recounting of how I moved numbers around differently this time.
Disclaimer: BA did not have grade/risk labels for IFA’s that were signed in 2021. As a result, these players are not adding anything to anyone’s farm system. Can’t work with what I don’t have. I’ve graded them so that they fall above prospects who aren’t in the book, but below prospects who made their organizations depth chart. If you invested heavily in IFA’s this draft, it’s counting against you in this evaluation. Apologies for the inconvenience, but blame BA for not having the balls to blindly rate Dominican teenagers.
The birth of a new valuation method
Like last season, I converted each prospects BA Risk into a number based on the table below. By adding this to the prospects Grade valuation I was able to convert each Grade/Risk combination into a single numeric value. Arranging prospects from highest to lowest based on this number provided me an approximation for how I believe BA would organize each franchises farm systems if they were given a handbook entry.
| Risk | Numeric Equivalence |
| Extreme | 5 |
| Very High | 7.5 |
| High | 10 |
| Medium | 15 |
| Low | 20 |
To compare farm systems against one another, I simply added up these numeric values and compared the totals and the top 30 totals. This is what I refer to as the Linear System.
This season, I added a twist on top of that. The linear approach worked well enough, but it had some weaknesses that I wasn’t thrilled with. For instance, the difference in value between a 55/High and a 50/High was the same as a 50/High and a 45/High. Ultimately, it is a preference, but I felt that this approach de-valued blue chip prospects. As a result, I developed an Exponential System.
This system can be summed up by the example of two 45/highs = one 50/high, and two 50 highs = one 55/high. Therefore it takes four 45/highs to equal a single 55/high. For comparison, in the linear system, a 50/High prospect is a value of 60, and a 45/high prospect is a value of 55, meaning that there values are very close and having two 45/high prospects provides far more “value” (110) than a single 50/High prospect.
The failings of a new valuation method
Like all evaluation systems, the Exponential System is flawed and I find myself questioning if it has swung too far in the other direction and is now overvaluing high end prospects. While this is possible and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle, I feel it has fewer flaws than the Linear System, and have made it my default frame of reference as a result.
Extra Credit fun with numbers
Lastly, for fun, I broke each farm system into groups of 15, and ranked all of them as individual units. So, for instance, a group of 1-15 prospects can rank 2nd overall, and the subsequent 16-30 prospects in the same org can rank 13th overall. This would mean that this franchises 16-30 prospects provide more value than the 1-15 prospects of 4 other franchises. This may be thoroughly confusing, but it was a fun exercise and I enjoyed the results, so I’m going to try to include this as best I can.
In conclusion
I’m still going to provide my linear analysis along with top 30s and farm totals in what I believe allows the painting of a picture that is more valuable than the individual rankings on their own. I’ve tried to format to limit redundancy, but if it’s confusing, please let me know as I continue to try to find the best way to communicate all of this info.
As always, any questions, comments or complaints, please feel free to reach out to me. I do love bull shitting about meaningless lists and rankings.
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