One day after MLB Pipeline rated it eighth overall in baseball, the Colorado Rockies farm system was ranked ninth in Baseball Prospectus’ recent organizational rankings. BP chooses to release their organizational ranking in the form of tiers and the Rockies placed in the third highest tier, right behind the Pirates, Dodgers, and White Sox.
With the exception of the White Sox, who jumped from a bottom ten system to a top ten system, each of the teams in this tier have dropped in the organizational rankings from a year ago, mostly due to graduated talent. The Rockies are no exception.
The Rockies graduated David Dahl and Jon Gray in 2016, and will likely lose Jeff Hoffman and Raimel Tapia this year, but the system continues to reload year after year. It doesn’t hurt that they are always picking pretty high in the draft I guess, though it is less good for their Hit List ranking than their Organizational one.
Despite that thinning out the talent remains, both at the top but, perhaps more importantly, in the lower levels of the system. When BP revealed their Top 10 in the system they noted, “The Rockies system has thinned out at the top a little bit, but it’s still chock full o’ major-league-ready talent.” The fact that four Rockies farmhands made the BP Top 101, including Brendan Rodgers at No. 11 overall, speaks to the amount of talent still in the system.