O's MiL System in the top tier . . . how about next year?

The Orioles minor league system has come pretty far in the last few years. Today, it stands as an organizational that is listed in the top three farm systems according to Baseball America (9th), Baseball Prospects (7th), and a quantitative method using Victor Wang's prospect worth analysis (6th). A typical response from some of the critics of the Orioles minor league system is that their recent upswing in quality is almost completely connected to Matt Wieters' worth. This is a fairly astute observation as Wieters does account for about a 35% of the MiL worth according to Victor Wang influenced calculations. With Wieters in the mix, the system is worth $112.1MM. You remove Wieters and that number drops to $79.9MM, which would slot us in 18th between the Mets and Reds. Other options would put us at $86.4MM (16th overall, Ross Detwiler), $100.7MM (10th overall, Matt LaPorta), or $88.6MM (16th overall, Philippe Aumont). Word at the time was that the Orioles did not expect Wieters to be there and, even if he was, was more likely to go with Detwiler or Aumont. Matt LaPorta was reported as a possible alternative. That said Joe Jordan has never mentioned who else he may have considered.

With that said, what does this mean for the rankings coming out in February of 2010?

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I'll be focusing on the Wang-related rankings as it makes up for generically ID'ing players with a more quantitative focus.

We can expect Wieters, Montanez, Reimold, and Bergesen to lose their rookie status (Reimold is probably the most arguable of the four to lose it). This would result in a system loss of about $39MM. This would reduce the overall worth of the system to $73MM. It appears as if Arrieta and Matusz will probably keep their value as top 25 pitchers. They both looked good this Spring and do not have shaky command issues, which is a typically value drop from one year to the next. That said, I do not think Matusz' value could increase and I think Arrieta's value is as likely to increase as Tillman's is likely to decrease. So, for the top three, I would probably just call it a push.

Going beyond that, Erbe, Snyder, Hoes, and Drake probably represent the best upside players. I would expect 1 or 2 to make it into BA's top 100 prospects. I think Erbe will sneak into BA's top 100 as he is already in there for other publications. This adds the team worth to $76.8MM. Assuming one of the other three makes it (let's saw Hoes), the value is raised by $10.5MM to $87.1MM. I doubt much else will change.

The draft will also be a contributor to next year's value. Conservatively estimating our selection as rating between the 25th and 50th ranked prospect in baseball and assuming the following picks with not be top 100 players . . . the Orioles are probably looking at an increase in value of $14-20MM. This places their final MiL value at $101.1-107.1MM.

We are probably looking at a loss of 9.7%.

How do you all feel about those assumptions?

Ideally, one would want a system that is operating with at worst a net zero loss in value each year. Losing a top ten player makes that rather difficult.



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