Having Wieters Solves A Lot Of Problems

The HardballTimes is ranking the 30 minor league systems based on expected value produced by their top prospects. They’re coming up with that value by looking at how much value past prospects contributed to their teams depending on how they were ranked individually and splitting out pitchers from position players.

The Orioles come in at #7, with a net present value of $112.03 M:

“Top 100 Prospects: Matt Wieters (1), Brian Matusz (23), Chris Tillman (24), Jake Arrieta (62)
Someone could make a legitimate case that the Orioles have the top farm system in baseball simply because of Matt Wieters. Baltimore's system may be the most top heavy farm system in the game. The fact that three of the top four are pitchers adds to the risk.”

That three of the top four are pitchers is likely by design, as Andy MacPhail has repeatedly said that he wants to develop pitchers and supplement them with position players via free agency. Someone could make the case that Wieters gives the O’s the top farm system baseball (I won’t), but I do think it’s reasonable to bump them up at least a notch or two (with SFG at $122.95 M, FLA at $131.26 M, and OAK at $133.32 M being the teams ahead of them).

BeyondTheBoxScore is doing something similar, but is including prospects out of the top 100 overall. They haven’t gotten to the AL East yet (they’re going division by division), but when they do I imagine the O’s will rank similarly high (and I’ll comment on it). Victor Wang (who did the HardballTimes piece, is also going to expand it out past the top 100 later too – I imagine the two will match up pretty well).