The latest rankings don’t bode well for the team
Two years ago, before the 2023 season, the Arizona Diamondbacks farm system was ranked as the third-best by MLB Pipeline. At the time, the writers said, “[Brandon] Pfaadt, Ryne Nelson and Drey Jameson give the club three ready (or near-ready) rotation options. Even when they and NL Rookie of the Year Award candidate Carroll graduate during the D-backs’ darkhorse run toward a playoff spot, young bats like Lawlar, Jones and Deyvision [sic] De Los Santos should keep the system afloat with exciting ceilings”. Fast forward 24 months, and in the rankings which came out last week, the D-backs have dropped all the way down to twenty-second place.
What happened? Partly, inevitable attrition. Prospects age, advance, become part of the major-league roster and are no longer prospects. Corbin Carroll, then the #2 prospect in all baseball, would be a good example. But the team had three other players in the overall Top 60 two years ago. Jordan Lawlar (#11), Druw Jones (#15) and Brandon Pfaadt (#59). The first two are still prospects, and indeed, Lawlar is at exactly the same spot in the ranking as he was. Pfaadt no longer qualifies, and turned 26 in October. But he has yet to turn his potential into consistent results, with a 4.70 ERA last year, and may start the year in AAA. Jones has simply dropped off, hampered by injuries which have limited him to 150 professional games since being drafted in June 2022. He’s now ranked only #7 on AZ’s list.
Meanwhile, there have been three drafts since Lawlar went in 2021, and none of the D-backs’ picks in those has joined him in the top 100. Lower picks are a factor, due to increased success at the major-league level. Arizona’s first pick in 2024 wasn’t until #29, and this year, it will be #18. But in 2022, they were second, selecting Jones, and the following season chose twelfth. The latter pick was Tommy Troy. He has also struggled to stay healthy, and is currently ranked as the D-backs #8 prospect. But top prospects aren’t necessarily top picks. The current #2 on the MLB Pipeline list (and #1 is Roki Sasaki, not a “real” prospect) is Roman Anthony, who didn’t get selected until #79 in the 2022 draft. That was after Arizona chose Lawlar, Landon Sims (for very similar money to Anthony) and the Hispanic Titanic, Ivan Melendez.
Sims is not currently in Arizona’s top 30 by MLB Pipeline, highlighting a particular problem with the farm system: a lack of pitching. Yilber Diaz is currently the only arm in the team’s top ten, and is an international signing, not a draftee. This continues a long-term trend. Arizona has had little success in the draft with pitchers – well, at least not for them. We’ve seen the likes of Max Scherzer and Trevor Bauer go on to win Cy Young awards for other teams. But over the almost quarter century of drafts since Brandon Webb in 2000 (an 8th-round pick, stressing my earlier point), the most productive Arizona pitcher by bWAR, drafted as a D-back, is… Josh Collmenter, at 7.6 bWAR. And he was a fifteenth-round pick. In terms of the best pitchers Arizona picked in the first five rounds, right now you can decide between Archie Bradley and Wade Miley. That’s not a great track record.
Is that an issue? Well, for a relatively small market (and budget) team like the D-backs, the standard operating procedure has been to build the foundation of a team from within. They can then use their budget to acquire free agents that will fill the gaps, and hopefully push the team over the edge. But in terms of sustainability, that does mean you need to have a pipeline of young – and, let’s face it, cheap – players coming through, to replace the ones who have become free agents, and too expensive to re-sign. If that pipeline is no longer producing, then it becomes difficult to sustain long-term and consistent competitiveness, because the holes become too many to fill.
Now, this is not an immediate problem for the D-backs. But let’s look forward and see how the future maps out. At the end of 2025, we will currently be losing Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor, Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen to free agency (and Jordan Montgomery, but… whatever). After 2026, we’ll have to rebuild the bullpen, with Ryan Thompson, A.J. Puk, Kevin Ginkel and Joe Mantiply all leaving team control. The good news is, most of the major pieces bar Lourdes Gurriel are under contract through at least 2028. Though the end of that year could be a Arizonapocalypse, with Gabriel Moreno, Alek Thomas, Jake McCarthy, Ketel Marte, Ryne Nelson and Drey Jameson all potentially out the door.
One point in Arizona’s defense is, some rankings view the farm system more positively than MLB Pipeline. At The Athletic Leith Kaw ranks SIX Diamondbacks in his top 100: Lawlar (#10), Demetrio Crisantes (#36), Ryan Waldschmidt (#65), Slade Caldwell (#86), Adrian del Castillo (#88) and Jones (#95), with Jansel Luis on the “just missed” list. He ranks the Arizona farm fourth overall. Now, long-term readers may recall a famous swing and miss by the pundit. But that does show the difficulties in predicting prospects. Maybe Kaw is right. Maybe MLB Pipeline are. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle: But the general consensus is gloomy. Baseball America also ranked Arizona in 22nd place, having plummeted twenty places in a year. Bleacher Report were even more pessimistic, at #26. ESPN largely concurred, at #25.
The bottom line is though, World Series are not handed out to farm systems, and prospects are only useful if they help the major-league club. The D-backs are two seasons from a World Series appearance, and last year, only missed out on their first consecutive post-season appearances since 2002 by the narrowest of margins. If that level of success is sustained in the current window of opportunity, then worrying about the farm system will be something I am more than happy to kick down the road.