Baseball Prospectus published its 2017 Farm System Rankings yesterday, and the results for the Red Sox were predictable, but uninspiring. The Red Sox finished at No. 21 on the list, as part of a tier of systems that “dropped like a stone” over the past season.
You know the reasons, of course. Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Manny Margot, Anderson Espinoza, Luis Alexander Basabe, Mauricio Dubon and others have all been traded in the past 12-or-so months. Factor in disappointing seasons from first-rounders like Deven Marrero, Michael Chavis and Trey Ball, and you get a precipitous drop for a farm system that ranked in at No.5 just a season ago.
“The culprits here are obvious. The Red Sox, Nats, and Indians all traded major pieces from their system in the last twelve months,” Jeffery Paternostro wrote in the 2017 edition. However, he noted, “Andrew Benintendi, Rafael Devers, Jason Groome, Victor Robles, Juan Soto, Francisco Mejia, and Triston McKenzie can paper over a lot of depth issues.”
Read the rest of BP’s latest ranking here, and read the Red Sox’s top-10 list (pre-Chris Sale trade) here.
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