Remember the days when the Texas Rangers were well established as having the top farm system in all of baseball?
Well those days are long gone, and that's not a bad thing. The teams that have the best farm systems are generally not the best teams at the big-league level, as evidenced by the Kansas City Royals' recent run atop the minor-league rankings.
But even still, the Rangers checked in at No. 9 in ESPN's Keith Law's minor league organizational rankings.
Here's what Law said about the Rangers' system:
They have Jurickson Profar, arguably the top prospect in baseball, three guys in the back half of the top 100, and as much talent from their short-season rosters last year as any organization in baseball, primarily on the position-player side. Their international spending spree had to end under the new CBA, but many of the fruits of those efforts are just now reaching full-season leagues, setting the Rangers up well to maintain their contender status for several more years.
The Rangers aren't No. 1 anymore because of lot of those guys are now in the bigs. Guys like Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison, etc. Joining them sooner rather than later will be guys like Jurickson Profar and Mike Olt (if Olt isn't traded). The Rangers' farm is in the perfect position right now, not great enough to mean there are no good, young players in the bigs, and good enough to have plenty of good trade chips to go out and get some big names, perhaps at the trade deadline.
