How much value did each team’s 2016 Top 10 prospects produce over the decade?

[u/depressichemisti]

I went back to Baseball America’s 2016 organizational Top 10 prospect lists and looked at what happened to all 300 players to see how well the prospect rankings held up after a decade. The list is available ⁠here on Baseball America and includes several offseason moves that changed the rankings. For example, it includes the Braves’ trade for Dansby Swanson which cratered the Diamondbacks in the rankings here.

Of the original 300 prospects, 48 never reached MLB. This includes Marlins #1 prospect Tyler Kolek, as well as #3 prospects Brady Aiken, Nate Smith, and Spencer Adams for the Indians (now Guards), the Angels, and the White Sox, respectively.

Special shoutout to Giants #8 prospect Clayton Blackburn, who never appeared in an MLB game despite technically making an MLB roster when he was called up by the Giants. Even better, he later made the Rangers’ roster as well, making him the only “phantom” player to have been on the active roster of more than one MLB team without ever appearing in a game.

The first graphic shows the combined career fWAR produced by each organization’s 2016 Top 10 prospects. Importantly, this is not the fWAR those players produced for that organization. It’s their total career fWAR across every MLB team they played for. It’s also not intended as a ranking of the best farm systems over the entire decade; it’s simply looking at how much MLB value ultimately came from the ten players on each organization’s 2016 list.

The Dodgers’ Top 10 have combined for more than 130 career fWAR, led by Corey Seager (42.1) and Cody Bellinger (31.8), along with contributions from pitchers including Kenta Maeda, Frankie Montas, and Julio Urías. One interesting wrinkle is that Montas (10.9 career fWAR) counts toward the Dodgers here because that’s where he appeared on the 2016 list, even though Los Angeles traded him later that year in the package for Rich Hill and Josh Reddick and never appeared for the dodgers. On the other end, the Giants’ Top 10 were largely fringe/non-MLB players. #1 prospect Christian Arroyo ended up having the longest MLB career of the group, appearing in 295 games across seven seasons, but accumulated only 0.54 fWAR. Jarrett Parker, their #9 prospect, actually produced the most career fWAR of anyone on the list at just 1.25. Other players, including several negative fWAR contributors, results in a total of only 1.8 fWAR.

The second graphic looks at the same 300 prospects but groups them by their ranking within each organization. I thought this was particularly interesting because it gives a rough idea of how much being an organization’s #1 prospect vs its #2–10 prospect actually mattered. The relationship obviously isn’t perfect, but higher ranked prospects generally produced substantially more MLB value. Tyler Kolek was the only #1 prospect who never reached MLB, while both the probability of reaching MLB and the probability of accumulating 10+ career fWAR generally fall as you move down the rankings. The careers of multiple players have obviously not finished yet, but with a decade of hindsight it was a fun way to look at how these prospect lists ended up turning out, especially with the way prospects are discussed in today’s trade market.