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A few days ago the folks at MLB.com (also known as MLB Pipeline) ranked all major league farm systems, with the cubs fairing extremely well and the Cardinals…not. This seems to be something of a consensus among the well-known prospect rankers. But just for kicks I thought it might prove informative to see how the prospects of the two franchises rate objectively, via some well-known projection models.
Since I have a tendency to get long-winded and don’t wish to brutalize any interested readers with a 500-word post, I’m going to break this analysis down into four sections and cover a section every couple of days over the next week.
First we’ll look at starting pitchers who have ZiPS forecasts for 2024, i.e., those relatively close to the majors. Second, starters who only have MLB projections at Clay Davenport’s website. Third, position players with ZiPS forecasts. And fourth you can probably guess.
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So. Below is a list of all 25-and-under starting pitchers in the Card/cub farm systems who project per ZiPS to throw at least 80 MLB innings in 2024 with an ERA of 4.60 or lower. The cutoff of 4.60 is arbitrary, but I’d say that 4.60 is a decent demarcator between a guy who can stick as a 4/5 starter in a good MLB rotation and one who cannot. (For context, Kyle Gibson has a career 4.54 ERA and posted an ERA between 4.73 and 5.35 in six of his last eight seasons. And some team just handed him an 8-figure salary. So 4.60 must be pretty good, anyway.) For the purpose of this exercise I think it’ll work best if the pitchers are initially anonymous.
Pitcher A projects to a 4.15 ERA across 102 MLB innings this year per ZiPS.
Pitcher B, 4.23 and 96 IP.
Pitcher C, 4.33 and 108.
Pitcher D, 4.34 and 87.
Pitcher E, 4.38 and 105.
Pitcher F, 4.39 and 137.
Pitcher G, 4.41 and 110.
Pitcher H, 4.42 and 110.
Pitcher I, 4.45 and 97.
Pitcher J, 4.47 and 111.
Pitcher K, 4.50 and 86.
Pitcher L, 4.54 and 115.
Pitcher M, 4.56 and 105.
Pitcher N, 4.58 and 114.
Pitcher O, 4.60 and 80.Of course, these are simply their 2024 forecasts; the age of each pitcher obviously will affect their longer term projection. A pitcher born in 2001 who projects at a current 4.44 major league ERA is intrinsically superior to one born in, say, 1998 who projects for an identical 2024 ERA.
As far as age is concerned, the cub twirlers on the above Honor Roll have an average birthdate of November 5, 1999. The Cardinal starters have an average birthdate of May 20, 2000. Thus, a modest advantage of half a year per man to St. Louis in that category. Not big but not nothing.
Then there’s also durability. The cubs on the list project to an average of 93 innings in 2024. The Cardinals, 108. Another modest advantage, Redbirds.
And finally, the most important part. How many of the above arms belong to each organization?
Pitchers B, G, K, and O are cubs.
Pitchers A, C, D, E, F, H, I, J, L, M, and N belong to the ostensibly poor farm system of St. Louis.This is interesting Bob. I’m enjoying this little series. It can maybe be a bit out of context since we don’t have ages. However, I’m at least game for the ride you are taking us on.
Farm system rankings tend to focus more on the cream of the crop over depth. Top quality vs. quantity. It would be great if ZIPS is accurate and all 10 of the named Cardinals became solid major leaguers. Heck, it would be wonderful if half of them make a major impact. Odds are against that, however. But they do have more tickets in the lottery.
We focus on elite pitchingprospects because it gives us hope to have true top of the rotation starters at the major league level. I understand the economics of signing top free agent pitchers. I understand and agree why we don’t do it. I agree that we have a boatload of future back of the rotation guys and bullpen arms. Competing for winning records and wildcards is what that brings us. Hopefully this year’s draft brings an elite pitching prospect. But we need a system to bring more. And losing 70 games every other year isn’t what I have in mind. But it might require losing for a couple years to get the ball rolling.
A lot a what makes or breaks the Cardinal system is starting pitchers in the upper levels. As noted, there are a bunch. Later this season the projections and narratives won’t matter because we will have results. Cream floats to the top and so do dead fish, belly up. We will have our answer.
Looking forward to this series as you guys really help me understand what we have as far as future potential.
Baseball is such a tough sport to forecast, as there are many examples of “can’t miss” guys flopping, and so-so prospects flourishing. Thus I think having more tickets in the lottery as Brian said, even if some of them have longer odds, has merit. This is especially so if they are on the younger side for their level.
For grins, I took a quick look at BAs top 100. Five Cubs and five Cards appear. However, they are not close to equal. Specifically, all five Cubs are in the top 47. The Cards only have one prospect (Winn 39) in the top 75.
Just one Cub pitcher is in the top 100, Cade Horton (24). Cards have Roby (76) and Hence (84).
Oops. Bob cited MLB Pipeline. They have seven Cubs in their top 100, with six of them hitters. Cards have just three total, one hitter and two pitchers.
BAs farm system rankings are Cubs #2, Cards #20. MLB Pipeline has them #2 and #23, respectively.
I’m looking forward to the series too. Sorry if I seemed snarky about our prospects. I just have post Liberatore stress syndrome.
In general I think the Cubs are the team to watch this year and over the next 3-4 years in the NL Central. I pick them to win it this year, and be competitive for a few more seasons. If the Pirates can keep their young guys, which they finally seem more intent on doing, they might make some noise in the next couple of years as well.
And heck, the Reds took some steps last year as well, while the Brewers have a high ranked system. It looks like it will be tougher for the Cardinals over these next few years to be the top dog. And if they feel the need to bring in one more established pitcher by trade, and unload a couple more prospects, they could really set themselves up for some dismal seasons over the latter half of the decade.
Keith Law has us better than BA at 13, with the Reds right behind us at 14. Still the Brewers at 2, Cubs at 5 and Pirates at 9 are above us.
But don’t feel too bad. The local nine (Rockies) are being called the worst team in baseball by some prognosticators, and they have one of the worst ranked farm systems. Yikes!
The Cubs are in an envious position. They have a highly ranked farm system and a ton of money. They are going to be a handful for the next few years. Their new PBO seems more willing to build and keep prospects than Theo did.
Before delving into more Cards and cubs pitching prospects, I want to thank everyone for their responses — and address a few.
“I’m enjoying this little series. It can maybe be a bit out of context since we don’t have ages.”
Good point. Of the 15 pitching prospects mentioned in the initial post, the Redbirds have 8 of the 9 youngest. When penning these types of posts, I know I sometimes give readers a bad case of “numbers fatigue,” which is why I simply calculated the average age of each team’s twirlers, rather than list everyone’s birthdates. When it comes to age it’s clearly advantage, St. Louis.
“Farm system rankings tend to focus more on the cream of the crop over depth. Top quality vs. quantity.”
Absolutely, as it should be. Quality is paramount. If all concerned are being evaluated accurately, a top 20-25 overall prospect is worth about as much as 4 or 5 guys in the 90-100 range. But see, here’s the thing about the cubs’ “quality pitching”: their Big Three of Horton, Wicks, and Brown are all accounted for on the above list (pitchers K, G, and B, respectively). And you can see what the ZiPS system thinks of them, relative to numerous Redbird farmhands.
“We focus on elite pitching prospects because it gives us hope to have true top of the rotation starters at the major league level…. Hopefully this year’s draft brings an elite pitching prospect.”
Different fans will define “elite pitching prospect” differently, but we can all agree you can’t have too many. 😉 Do the Birds have any elite ones? Well, last August, Fangraphs — which for more than half a decade has consistently dismissed and denigrated Cardinal farmhands at every turn — rated Tink and Tekoah the #7 and #11 pitching prospects in the sport. (How they plummeted to #25 and #30 since then is a fairly fascinating question, given that the only thing that’s happened since last August is that (1)Tekoah got healthy; and (2)Tink struggled in Double-A at age 20.
“Sorry if I seemed snarky about our prospects. I just have post Liberatore stress syndrome.”
Snark is harmless. No blood, no foul.“In general I think the Cubs are the team to watch this year and over the next 3-4 years in the NL Central. I pick them to win it this year, and be competitive for a few more seasons.”
Much as I hate to concur, I don’t see any alternative. The Northsiders almost certainly have the best manager in the division by far (the Cardinals, Reds, and Pirates all have bottom-feeders in the managerial chair, and the Brewers guy is an unknown), and the baby bears have deeper pockets if and when they choose to use them. Like with Counsell.
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Anyway, more pitchers.
Again, this list is completely separate from the previous one. There may be a stray inning or two of AA action among these guys, but basically this is a list of the best A-Ball arms. Since I used a 4.60 ERA as a dividing line last time with the upper minors, I’ll do the same thing with these younger pitchers.With no ZiPS or Steamer forecasts available, I used the Clay Davenport numbers, specifically his Peak Projections. I believe that by “Peak,” Davenport is referring to a player or pitcher’s best 3-year stretch. His website includes both ERA and FIP projections, so I averaged the two.
With a 4.60 cutoff for each pitcher’s Peak stretch, there are 8 Cardinals and 6 cubs. So there would seem to be an advantage here for the Redbirds, albeit a narrow one.
Let’s check, though, what the specific projected ERAs look like, per Davenport.
Top Cardinal A-Ball pitcher, 3.38 ERA across Peak seasons
Top cub, 4.21#2 Cardinal, 3.43
#2 cub, 4.40#3 Card, 3.94
#3 cub, 4.41It keeps going like this. Just like with the upper minors and the ZiPS forecasting model, Clay Davenport’s projection system says the Cardinals have both more depth and better quality pitchers than the cubs. And it isn’t close. In either the upper minors or lower.
This isn’t my opinion. It isn’t anyone’s opinion. It’s math.
However. In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think the Birds’ pitching prospects are far, far better than the cubs’. A couple cubs are underrated and a few Birds the opposite, especially Connors Lunn and Thomas.But if I had to choose the pitchers from one farm system or the other, and bet my half my savings which group eventually churns out more MLB value, I would take the Birds without blinking. I might even give odds.
Fangraphs — which for more than half a decade has consistently dismissed and denigrated Cardinal farmhands at every turn —
As it turns out, they were right, as a look at this year’s likely active roster makes abundantly clear. If one is a believer in the idea that money talks, have a look at who makes what. I think Edman’s 2/16 arb buyout deal is the most significant payout to a home grown. Mostly a bunch of min wage guys scuffling to make it and establish value, and if history holds, as soon as they get to where they are due to make serious money, they will be offed, being judged not worth it. Impact players worth serious money will continue to come from somewhere else.
Looking at the numbers in that perspective gives me hope. Theoretically, if we finish the season anywhere ahead of the Cubs, I can be ok with that.
Sorry for the delay, but now we’ll take a look at the position players of the cub and Card minor league systems.
I used a slightly different methodology than I did with Cardinal and cub pitchers, when comparing these prospects. And I’m not breaking the hitters down into two posts, as with pitchers. All at once this time. For a balanced overview, I looked at three different categories: (1)the 2024 ZiPS forecast for each; (2)the 2024 Davenport projections; and finally (3)the Davenport Peak projections.
I examined all position prospects in each organization, then compiled a top 20 ranking in each of the three aforementioned categories, according to predicted WAR-per-600 plate appearances. Each of the three top 20’s combines the franchises’ prospects. So for example, the top 3 in 2024 ZiPS projections are Michael Busch, Masyn Winn, and Pete Crow-Armstrong, in that order. One Bird, two bad guys.
With a trio of top 20 lists, I then very simplistically assigned 20 points for the top of each list, down to 1 at the bottom, and tallied each prospect’s point total from the three lists. A player who didn’t make any of the top 20 lists obviously gats a zero –but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a cipher of a prospect. For instance, Redbird outfielder Won-Bin Cho and cub middle infielder Cristian Hernandez are both very legit players, but as teens in full season ball they didn’t distinguish themselves quite enough to project quite enough to currently make any combined top 20 list.
On a gut level I disagree strongly with some of the following — and my own methodology here is, again, simplistic in the extreme…but if nothing else this point system gives us an objectively generated range of reasonable expectations for these guys relative to one another. A total of 24 players made at least one of the top 20 lists (15 cubs and 9 Cards).
So, the rankings.
1) Masyn Winn 56 points
2) Pete Crow-Armstrong 54
3) Michael Busch 50
4) Thomas Saggese 49
5) Jimmy Dale Crooks III 41
6) Victor Scott 39
7) Pedro Pages 35
8) Moises Ballesteros 33
9) Matt Mervis 31
10) Owen Caissie 30
11) Cesar Prieto 26
12)T Leo Bernal 24
12)T BJ Murray Jr. 24
12)T Luis Vazquez 24
15) Kevin Alcantara 21
16)T Pedro Ramirez 20
16)T Sammy Hernandez 20
18) Alex Canario 18
19) Hadyn McGeary 12
20) James Triantos 10
21)T Noah Mendlinger 9
21)T Matt Shaw 9
23) Pablo Aliendo 6
24) Jefferson Rojas 1Add it all up and the tally is 343 points for the enemy, 299 for our team. What’s happening here, vis a vis Cards/cubs, is basically the reverse of the pitcher rankings. Certainly in terms of depth, as here it’s the Chicagoans who have a decided advantage — and that’s with just a single point for Rojas and none for fellow cub teen Fernando Cruz, both of whom I consider preferable to plenty of guys on the above list.
I think it’s fair to say that in the long run, the cubs are likely to get more from their position players than the Cards, just as the Cards have the advantage with pitching. So which farm system will be the most productive overall, during the next 8-10 years? As a gambler, I’d be comfortable taking either side if offered 5-3 odds. Maybe even 3-2 odds. Based on all publicly available objective information, the total talent is very, very close. And both franchises probably should rank in the 6-8 range among all organizations, though I’d need to examine other teams more forensically than I have.
I was certain that the Cubs should come out ahead on the position prospect side. Nearly all of the Cards position talent graduated in the past 2 seasons. And the Cubs have a lot of position talent currently percolating. That’s not necessarily a problem for the Cards if the guys we have who graduated in the past couple years stay better than all the Cubs players coming up. Can Walker, Winn, Gorman, Donovan, Nootbaar, Carlson, Burleson, Herrera, Scott, and Saggese outproduce the Cubs position prospects and younger prospect graduates? That’s really the question. It’s helpful to have learned that our pitching prospects definitely should. Thanks for this series Bob. Good work.
Well said Bob and jnevel. It is good to see that at least compared to the Cubs, the Cardinals are a bit heavier on the prospect pitching side since we have graduated far more offensive youngsters in the last 2-3 years than hurlers. Now we need to get some good, young arms their diplomas, or the next half-decade could be rough for the boys in red – especially if the Northsiders are competitive.
And it looks promising for those guys with a solid system and a manager who is in all likelihood better than the guy we have guiding the ship.
Yep IMO the Cubs have by far the best manager in the NL. That was their biggest acquisition in the offseason and could very well determine the outcome of the NLC this year.
To take my mind off this fairly dismal but not unexpected start to the MLB season, I decided to compare the consensus very best minor league position player prospects to their Cards and cubs counterparts — using the objective ZiPS/Davenport points system (60 points max) introduced above, several posts ago.
As a reminder, here’s everyone from StL and our Arch enemies who scored 30 or better:
56 M. Winn
54 P. Crow-Armstrong
50 M. Busch
49 T. Saggese
41 J. Crooks III
39 V. Scott II
35 P. Pages
33 M. Ballesteros
31 M. Mervis
30 O. CaissieNow, below is the ZiPS/Davenport points score for every position player ranked among an overall top 25 prospect per either MLB.com, Keith Law, or Fangraphs. That’s overall, including pitching prospects. In short, this is the absolute creme de la creme, according to the professionals.
60 J. Holliday
57 W. Langford
57 E. Carter
56 C. Mayo
54 J. Quero
53 S. Basallo
52 J. Lawlar
52 C. Cowser
51 C. Keith
50 R. Anthony
50 J. Caminero
47 J. Chourio
45 Col. Montgomery
44 Car. Williams
44 J. Dominguez
43 J. Wood
42 Br. Lee
40 B. Rocchio
39 Wa. Jenkins*
36 D. Crews
35 Ter. Johnson
31 Mar. Mayer
28 A. Amador
25 H. Kjerstad
2 Sp. JonesI figured the very top prospects would have high scores, but I never thought the correlation between prospect rankings and ZiPS/Davenport scores would be this overwhelming. With just a handful of exceptions, the elite guys in the subjective national rankings are the same guys with elite Z/D point scores here. And since I strictly apply the same evaluation standards to all prospects regardless of organization, the above scores gives me even more faith in the highest-scoring Redbird position player prospects.
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Not everyone eligible is listed above; Josue DePaula, Ethan Salas, and Max Clark also received top 25 accolades, but are too young/inexperienced to have ZiPS projections. So I omitted them, of course.
*Walker Jenkins on the other hand also got no ZiPS forecast. But his Davenport numbers were so spectacular after his astonishing pro debut that he scored 39 on the Z/D points scale anyway!
Spencer Jones really did score only two points. He ranks as the 15th overall prospect by the
paid professionalsclowns at Fangraphs. But the fact that Spencer Jones is an enormous, athletic Yankee outfield prospect who vaguely resembles Aaron Judge apparently wasn’t enough to energize similar enthusiasm at MLB.com (#84), Baseball America (#46), or Baseball Prospectus (#33).Translating those rankings (15, 33, 46, 84) into approximate career WAR projections, basically Fangraphs expects a 40-45 WAR career for Jones The Behemoth, BPro anticipates roughly 18-20 WAR total, BA about a dozen or so WAR, and MLB.com maybe 6 or 7. I don’t know who is most right, but I can nearly guarantee you it isn’t Fangraphs — and I’m 99.99999% certain this guy ain’t Aaron Judge Redux.
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