Back in the late 2000s, before the Texas Rangers had ever won a postseason series or gone to two straight World Series, the Rangers had what was widely regarded as the best farm system in baseball.
Of course, a lot of the players that garnered those rankings ended up starring for the Rangers in their glory years of 2010 and 2011 before player turnover began. After a brief lull in the farm rankings, the Rangers are back, despite the franchise's struggles at the big-league level.
ESPN's Keith Law, one of the more regarded baseball prospect minds, released a ranking of MLB's farm systems on Wednesday, and the Rangers checked in at No. 3 in all of baseball, behind only Boston and Atlanta.
The big reason? Well, it's all names we've been hearing for a year or two now: Joey Gallo, Jorge Alfaro, Nomar Mazara, Nick Williams, Jake Thompson, Dillon Tate, Luis Ortiz, Chi Chi Gonzalez and the list goes on...
In the release of his rankings, Law wrote: "The Rangers drafted for ceiling for years and adopted the same approach in Latin America, with the fruits of that huge wave of talent signed in 2011-12 starting to reach the majors or get close this year, with Gallo debuting early and Mazara starring in Double-A at age 20," Law wrote. "The Rangers have been down a little for the past year and a half, but there's a cascade of talent coming to help the major league club."
