The Pirates' Turnaround: Where's the Proof?

After a multi-part fire sale and two consecutive years of record draft expenditures, the Pirates' brass claims to have transformed the system so that the team can now build from within.  But where's the evidence of this?

In a 30 team league, only two Pirates ranked among the top 100 prospects, their fewest since 2005, (all-time list of Pirates who have ranked among BA's top 100 ) -- only two organizations had fewer this year.  Even worse, it appears that only four would rank among the top 200 or so . . . and three of these four are slated to make their major league debuts this year.

So even if those three pan out, where does this leave the team next year and down the road?  Will lower rated players and new draft picks shine this summer and move up the ranks?  While that might have seemed like a legitimate hope five years ago, it hasn't happened much recently.

When we look at the past couple years, that possibility looks less likely than one might imagine.  Of last year's top 10 prospects, one (McCutchen) moved up to the bigs, three maintained their positions (Alvarez, Tabata, and Lincoln), and the other 6 dropped out of the top 10.  If we go back another year to the 2008 top 10, we see that only two (McCutchen and Lincoln) made the bigs or remain top prospects.  So even if we assume that the top four will pan out, the past few years don't lend much evidence that numbers 5-10 will move up the ranks.

Indeed, if we go back further and examine the Pirates' top ten prospects over the past 7 years we see that only one player (Steve Pearce, #8-2006/#3-2007) has moved from the bottom half to the top half of the list in the past 5.  As the table below shows, 17 of the 18 prospects ranked 5-10 dropped off the list the following year (1, Pearce, moved up to the majors) between 2007 and 2010.  Between 2004 and 2007, however, only 4 dropped off the list the following year while 7 remained on the list and 8 moved up to the majors.

Pirates Prospects #5-10 the following year

years	steady	up	down	majors	dropped
2009-10	0	0	0	0	6
2008-09	0	0	0	0	6
2007-08	0	1	0	0	5
2006-07	0	0	0	6	0
2005-06	0	3	1	1	1
2004-05	0	2	0	1	3

As you might notice from the tables I linked to, all of the prospects who topped out in the bottom five and went on to become impact major leaguers -- Nate McLouth (#6, 2006), Matt Capps (#10, 2006), Freddy Sanchez (#7, 2004), and Ryan Doumit (#10, 2004) -- were from the earlier time period.  Daniel McCutchen is the only name that stands out from 2007-09 who could potentially be added to that list.  And maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems that the lists have recently been dominated by first-round draft picks and outside acquisitions while in the past there were more later round draft picks (e.g. Zach Duke, Nate McLouth, Ian Snell) who ascended up the list.

Of course, maybe this year will be different.  After all, in addition to standouts Alvarez and Sanchez, they have five former top 100 prospects (Jose Tabata, Gorkys Hernandez, Brad Lincoln, Neil Walker, and Tim Alderson) in their system along with a number of later-round selections from the past couple years who signed for over-slot bonuses.  Maybe the new management team's draft and development brilliance will begin to shine through this year (and, given the discussion above, it might be imperative that it does).  But such an occurrence would stand in stark contrast to recent trends.

I suppose the best measure may come when Baseball America ranks farm systems again -- the Pirates ranked 18th last year.  Though, given the context, I'd argue that next year's rating might be far more important.

As a Pirates fan, I very much want to believe that new management has transformed the minor league system.  But I see very little objective evidence that it has.