Cleveland Guardians have 12th-ranked farm system according to Baseball America

The Guardians have one of the deepest farm systems in baseball, but are they developing enough top talent to stay competitive down the road?

The Cleveland Guardians have quite a few prospects just about ready to make the leap to the majors, but how many of them are considered elite by an outsider’s opinion?

Depends on who you ask, and if that happens to be Baseball America, the consensus over there is that the Guardians have some of the best minor-league depth in baseball, but the trade-off is in not necessarily having the absolute top prospects out there (more on this in a bit).

Baseball America recently ranked MLB’s organizations, putting the Guardians at number 12, having this to say about the farm system:

"One can argue the Guardians’ prospect depth is among the best in the game, but a lack of high-end talent at the top drags the system down, with no players among the game’s top 50 prospects. The next wave of major league talent is on the cusp of reaching Cleveland, most notably Tyler Freeman, Brayan Rocchio and George Valera. (source: Baseball America)"

Though the Guardians are ranked in the middle of the pack and don’t have any top 50 prospects by Baseball America’s standards, Cleveland’s future is undeniably bright. While, sure, it would be great to have a front-loaded farm system with a few can’t-miss prospects (if there is such a thing), the depth the Guardians have built over time should allow them to build a team that can stay in contention for the foreseeable future, especially under their eternal spending restrictions.

Plus, who ever said a team’s best player absolutely had to be a top-ranked prospect anyway? If you’re lucky enough to have a Wander Franco in your system, that’s one thing, but there are plenty of ways to build a functional and flourishing organization, and the Guardians are opting for extreme depth at the moment, which they could potentially use to their advantage in the trade market.

Sometimes, people get too wrapped up in organizational rankings, because it hardly tells the whole story of a team’s philosophy. And at the end of the day, these are all still prospects, and the math tells us that many of these players will either never make the majors or will fail to live up to whatever lofty expectations have been set for them.

So will Tyler Freeman or Steven Kwan lead the league in batting average someday? Is George Valera the next Manny Ramirez for Cleveland? Will any of these names even stick in the majors? Only time will tell, but the Guardians are throwing as many high-quality darts out there as possible to see what hits (literally).