We’ve all seen the rankings of farm systems and the Pirates have certainly done well. The prospect writers and publications ranked them anywhere from first to sixth. But we all know that system rankings don’t necessarily lead to the desired end, which is championships.
I’ve tried bolstering my optimism by finding other data points besides the opinions of the prospect mavens. Anything that implies the Pirates are doing things right this time. Lately that’s meant comparing the overall makeup of the current system to other Pirate systems of the past two decades. Last week that amounted to a positional breakdown of the Pirates’ Baseball America top 30s since 2001.