One analyst's take on O's No. 1 farm rankings

When FanGraphs.com placed six Orioles among its top 69 prospects this week in their ranking of the top 100 in baseball, it was certainly an impressive haul for the O's.

But they were not the first outlet to rank six Orioles in the top 100, as ESPN beat them to it by a few days and the O's placed a half-dozen players among the top 98 in baseball.

Six Orioles were in the ESPN top 100:
1 - Adley Rutschman
8 - Grayson Rodriguez
74 - Colton Cowser
94 - DL Hall
96 - Gunnar Henderson
98 - Coby Mayo

FanGraphs had it this way: Rutschman (1), Rodriguez (3), Hall (27), Cowser (40), Henderson (66) and Mayo (69).

ESPN also released farm system rankings recently for all 30 organizations in Major League Baseball and the Orioles were ranked No. 1. They were also No. 1 in the latest from MLBPipeline.com, which came out in August. The Orioles ended last year No. 2 by Baseball America and now are No. 4 in their latest farm system ratings. The Orioles are No. 10 via The Athletic.

Click here for ESPN's farm system rankings (subscription may be required). In the writeup, ESPN MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel says of the O's: "The team had a solid 2021 draft headlined once again by a bunch of position players who were solid values. My pick to click in the system (Grayson Rodriguez) took off and is now the best pitching prospect in the minors. ... The hitter and pitcher development plans appear to be working, and GM Mike Elias appears to have taken what worked from the Astros while leaving behind the stuff nobody wanted."

In a media chat this week, McDaniel was asked to further explain his reasons for ranking the Baltimore farm system No. 1.

"So the guys that are running things in Baltimore came from Houston, and Houston had a long track record of a number of things," McDaniel said. "But if we're ignoring some of the more Luhnow-y things, they were very good, sort of on the cutting-edge, of pitcher development, focused on analytics and pitch design, and tweaking arm slot, leaning into a spin rate, adjust the tilt of a breaking ball.

"All those sorts of very fine things that were hard to do. Basically nobody was effective at doing it back then, and now most teams are reasonably good at it. Like they have some ability to do it. They've gotten really good at that and have been really good at that, and it's not just one or two. It's not just Mike Elias, it's pitching coaches and all kinds of people from top to bottom, having a process, things like that.

"They're really good at that, and there's also some newer elements, like pitcher development was sort of the beginning of that curve. Hitter development, you know, developing raw power or taking a guy with raw power, tweaking his approach a little bit, all these are the little things in development in an old-school way when I've been in more traditional front offices, it's usually been, 'Oh, we don't take a pitcher that does blank because we can't fix that.' That's a thing you don't fix.

"You can't take hitters that have this kind of stride, step in the bucket, or whatever it is, because you can't fix that. I think now we're seeing these sort of progressive analytical, those sorts of teams, now that they have numbers, whether it's like a K-Vest that measures your explosion in your swing, there's not numbers on everything, and so something that used to be the domain of traditional teams of, 'Oh, we have a good swing guy, he can figure this out.' "

McDaniel also gave the club props for its draft picks under Elias.

"I really like what they've done in the draft, focusing on position players as opposed to pitching and taking shots on high school players later that they think they have more information on than other teams, whether than burning a pick and money on them, just burn the money and not so much the high pick," he said.

"And then focusing on those things they're really good at, which is optimizing pitchers and finding characteristics they can work with on position players. And then they've also done that a little bit better than the other teams that have also been in sort of asset collection mode because we've seen some of these rebuilds go much slower or not go quite as well, and they've executed at a high level."

Coming tomorrow: Will Hall eventually wind up in the bullpen and not as a starting pitcher? FanGraphs' top prospect writer believes so, yet the outlet still ranks him No. 27 on the top prospects list. We'll examine that in this space on Monday.