John Sickels’ 2013 Farm System Rankings

In Commentary And Analysis, Minor Leagues by dmick8928 Comments

John Sickels has published his 2013 farm system rankings and the Cubs are 10th. That's 10 spots better than a year ago. The Cubs system has improved quite a bit.

10) Chicago Cubs (20): Another system that has improved quickly. Strengths: hitting at the top: Javier Baez, Albert Almora, Jorge Soler, Dan Vogelbach is a very impressive quartet and there is depth beyond them. Good developments with recent Latin American prospects at the lower levels. Weaknesses: pitching is much, much weaker than the hitting. Improving that has to be a priority.

Of the four mentioned, only Baez is above Low A so the Cubs will have to wait awhile for this group to arrive. It will also be interesting to see how the Cubs go about improving their pitching. They'll take the best player available in the draft when they pick 2nd and my guess is that will be a position player. They'll probably stock up in the next few rounds as they did last summer and hope some of them stick.

It's good news that the Cubs are 10th, but there wouldn't be good news without bad news. The Cardinals have the best farm system in baseball and another NL Central team, the Pirates, also rank higher than the Cubs at 9th. So even with an improved farm system, the Cubs are still middle of the pack in the division. The Reds aren't far behind either.

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  3. josh

    In reference to the wins projection of last thread, Myles mentioned they are going to be bad on defense again. I think that annoyed me more than anything last year. There weren’t very many leads last year, and the ones they had you could bet they were going to blow. At least, that’s how it felt.

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  5. Jed Jam Band

    I do hope that we can mine Garza for an upper-level pitching prospect this season. Would certainly be nice.

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  6. SVB

    I hope the Royals are still contending at the deadline, because based on their trade of Wil Myers to the Rays, we should be able to fleece them for whatever is left in return for Ian Stewart and Soriano.

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  13. Rice Cube

    http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/01/rodriguez-may-not-return-to-yankees-1.html

    Why would he retire/settle? It’s to his benefit since the contract is unlikely to be voided etc. and the Yankees can’t get rid of him without taking a massive hit to keep stretching this out such that he gets paid all the money. I don’t think they can force him to retire. He also has the championship ring already. I get that he’s competitive and wants to break Barry Bonds’ homer record, but that’s a shitload of money to consider walking away from. I’d want the whole bag.

    Or he could do as Calcaterra said and just take the 50 game suspension while recovering from surgery (dying laughing) Then he only loses $10MM or so. I don’t think they could void the rest of his contract post-suspension either. Not a lawyer…

    We need a GBTS signal.

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