2012 Organizational Rankings: #26 – San Diego
Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.
2012 Organizational Rankings
#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
San Diego’s 2011 Ranking: #20
2012 Outlook: – 38 (23rd)
The needle for San Diego Padres is pointing up, but that may not be saying too much. Suffice it to admit: 2012 might be pretty brutal for the Padres. Barring some breakthough, corner-turning performances, the team could be headed for another 60- to 70-win season.
The starting pitching staff ranked last in our positional rankings, their right field ranked No. 29, first base No. 29, and second base No. 25. The only real bright spots on this team, for the time being, are 3B Chase Headley, CF Cameron Maybin, and arguably SP Cory Luebke (age 27) and 1B Yonder Alonso (age 25).
Could this team surprise us in 2012? Yes. Could they move up the rankings significantly in 2013? Sure. Would I bet my favorite baseball cap on the matter? … Probably not.
With a surprise showing from the Arizona Diamondbacks, who jumped from 5th to 1st last year, the NL West was won with 94 wins. The Padres amassed 71 wins — with SP Mat Latos and SP Aaron Harang still on the roster. Their departure means the Padres need to vacuum up some 365 extra innings with an uninspiring rotation.
But the division is not as top-heavy as the NL East or NL Central, and the Diamondbacks may not have quite enough depth to repeat their 94-win season, but 90+ wins should be within reach for Arizona, so a Padres playoff season probably needs to approach that threshold — or pray for the second Wild Card to slip away from the NL East.
2013+ Outlook: 54 (11th)
The Padres have five prospects in Marc Hulet’s Top MLB 100 Prospects list, most notably the aforementioned 1B Yonder Alonso (No. 39) and the unaforementioned C Yasmani Grandal (No. 40). All told, the team earned Hulet’s top Minor League Systems Rank with a franchise rich in both pitching and position prospects.
Keith Law’s rankings were a bit more bearish than bullish equally strong, as he slotted the Padres at No. 1, saying, “Without Anthony Rizzo, they no longer have a top-25 prospect in their system, but in terms of total future value of players likely to play significant roles in the big leagues, they’re ahead of everyone else.”
How will Alonso grow some Power Wings? How will Grandal do when he comes up? Can Luebke build on his 2011 success? The answers to questions like these should have a huge impact on the 2012 through 2014 seasons, but after that, the questions increase — which is good for Padres because too much of the team is already without question (see Jason Bartlett, Orlando Hudson, Will Venable, and so on — the Known Commodities).
Behind Alonso, the Padres have OF Rymer Liriano (age 22 this season) and 3B Jedd Gyorko (age 24) and a slew of pitchers (RHP Casey Kelly, LHP Robbie Erlin, RHP Joe Wieland, etc.). Depending on how quickly — and successfully — these guys can rise to the majors (Gyorko, Erlin, and Wieland could/should see time in 2012), the Padres could be very good very soon.
Financial Resources: 39 (25th)
Had the Jeff Moorad news broke before we compiled our rankings, the Padres would presumably have done worse in the financial category this year.
As it stands, the finances of the Padres are in a state of flux: Moorad’s bid for the team is over, which leaves a giant biscuit of unknown on the table. The once-again current owner, John Moores, was quoted as saying about Moorad’s failed bid: “I’ve never consistently been so wrong about anything that’s happened to me. I’m not the best-informed person on the planet … now I’ve got to be.” So Moores has to suddenly resume the owner’s duties after a multi-year hiatus, and meanwhile he needs to find new buyers and finish what could be a franchise-making TV deal — a deal presumably in the final stages of completion.
TV deals have become the latest cash crops for MLB franchises (look at the Yankees’ payrolls relative to the league before and after they formed the YES Network or how the Texans’ and Angels’ finances sorted themselves out more recently), so getting a new, handsome, $25 million-per-annum contract could make the Padres a more lucrative buy as well as lead to a better on-field product. (According to some reports, the Moorad group was depending on the TV contract to be able to afford the franchise purchase in the first place; had the franchise sale gone through, it follows that the Padres on-field payroll would have tasted little to none of that sweet television nectar — at least for a while.)
Still, this is a team that ranked No. 20 on Forbes’ Business of Baseball list and had the fourth lowest revenue according to their estimates. The new deal will help, but more exposure and an improved record — and a subsequent bigger followup deal — would help even more.
Baseball Operations: 49 (13th)
The Padres represent the first of five strong ops teams to land in the lower half of the rankings. With a 49 rating, the Padres finish in the top half of the ops rankings (13th), but overall finish well beneath the halfway mark in the overall org rankings (26th).
The transition from GM Jed Hoyer to GM Josh Byrnes was unusual and unexpected — unexpected to me at least — but Byrnes and Co. should be able to assemble some competitive teams despite the equally bizarre ownership scandal at present. Hoyer may have left, but he left behind not only some strong drafts, but a large swathe of his staff. Byrnes (who was with the team before Hoyer left) and the Padres front office presumably had little in the way of transition this offseason even though they swapped out GMs.
The team has finished Stage 1 of any good rebuilding process — that of stocking the minor league system with weapons and ammunition — but as the team sneaks closer to contention (and deals with more MLB-ready talent acquisition and retention), we will get a clearer picture of the quality of process this front office employs. Because the management group descends from the Theo Epstein tree, we start our expectations higher.
Overall: 42 (26th)
San Diego dropped six slots from last year’s No. 20 ranking, and though it is important to remember the new methodology this year hopefully rates things a bit more accurately, the No. 26 rating is a bummer for San Diego fans. In 2011, the team was coming off a 90-72 season and the Diamondbacks were still a 5th place team. The team and the division has changed, and now the Padres are firmly in the lower half of MLB.
How a person views the Padres’ minors — and the FanGraphs writers see their future hopes as strong, but not necessarily the best — is ultimately how a person views the team. The Byrnes leadership group should be solid, but the recent upgrades in competitiveness around MLB front offices dulls the competitive advantage their analytics might have been 10 years ago. The NL West is still a pretty backward division, but the market for player talent is open to all bidders, and for now, the Padres’ purse strings are somewhat knotted.
San Diego may not be great right now, but the Padres have plenty of reasons to have faith.
Umm, Keith Law rated the Padres as the best minor league system in the league
http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove11/story/_/id/7547640/san-diego-padres-best-farm-system-baseball-mlb
Yeah, it looks like the Padres were #16 in his organizational rankings, not farm system rankings.
Yeah, the whole discussion of the farm system in this article is a head scratcher. It’s (a) elite and (b) has a lot of depth. John Sickels writes: “Incredible depth after the winter trades pushes this system almost to the top. ”
Other rankings beyond Law and Hulet:
John Sickels – 2nd
http://www.minorleagueball.com/2012/1/23/2728027/2012-baseball-farm-system-rankings-prospects
Baseball America – 3rd http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/organization-talent-rankings/2012/2613155.html
Wait what? Keith Law ranked the Padres number 1 for 2012. They were 16th in 2011.
http://proxy.espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove11/story/_/id/7547640/san-diego-padres-lead-keith-law-organizational-rankings-2012-mlb
Touche. Must’ve got my links crossed.
No problemo-just thought I’d point it out. Does this affect their outlook score at all? It’s a bit strange to me that a team with the best farm system could be as low as 26 on the overall rankings.
I would think the 15 point difference in their 2012 outlook and their 2013+ outlook reflects their very good farm system.
The problem is that they have very little major league ready big league talent. Headley, Maybin and Luebke (their best players from last season) have only had one good season each, and could very well not amount to much.
Given the volatility of prospects, potential can only get you so far. And right now, the Padres don’t have much of a solid major league foundation to rely upon.
Not that I’m a Padres fan, but how can they can be ranked 26th when they’re rated higher in each of the categories considered? A 25th, 11th, 13th, and 23rd, even when weighted differently, don’t add up to 26th.
Well, some of their rankings above came on the virtue of a tie, and as Cameron noted in the methodology, present talent and financial resources carry the heaviest weight — and those happen to be the areas where the Padres struggle most.
Near the middle (15-25) probably small changes in score probably are associated with big changes in rank for that category, but small changes in overall rank. Basically, the Padres lack a “bright spot” that puts them solidly in the top 10 for one category that teams ranked higher will have.
Also, keep in mind that overall rank is generally not an average of rankings in individual categories. If you had a team that was 29th in all four categories, they’d probably be 30th overall by a healthy margin, because different teams could be last in each of the four categories.
As a baseball fan without direct concern for the Padres, everything that they’ve been doing lately has made me feel positive about their future.
The writer is absolutely correct that the next steps will define the Byrnes group, since they’re already heading down the AA/Friedman path. AA had a much worse situation with the Jays when he stepped in, which is why his moves look much more dramatic and successful, but Byrnes and predecessor have done a similar thing so far.
If I was a Padres fan, and I can’t be because of the camo uniforms, but if I was I’d be feeling the same excitement I’ve felt with the Jays the last while.
Padres – you’re movin’ on up!
The camo uniforms aren’t so bad, but the Padres can’t touch those beauties the Jays are bringing back.
The Padres are bad right now, but they have a lot of things going for them. A great farm system and a weak division. Their park will help them develop their young starters, and they will probably trade Headley and Hundley (to make room for Grandal and Gyorko) for even more prospects.
“How a person views the Padres’ minors — and the FanGraphs writers see it more as a strong, but not the best — is ultimately how a person views the team.”
Two things are bugging me about this:
1) Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but did you mean to write “writers see it more as strong, but not the best”, or “writers see it more as a strength, but not the best”? I don’t understand the phrase in it’s current form.
2) As Fangraphs is a collection of writers, I wouldn’t expect you all to have the same minor league rankings, but does your view of the Padres’ farm deviate significantly from that of Mr. Hulet’s? To me, there’s quite a gap between strong and “the best”.
Anyway, I’m nagging. Excellent article Mr. Woodrum.
1) I’ll fix that now.
2) I can’t speak for the other writers, but I believe I rated the Padres pretty highly. The fact they lack any top top prospects seems curious to me, but I still think there’s little doubt they have a strong minor league system.
It’s important to note, also, that young, proven talent at the MLB level (a la the Rays) has much more sure value than prospects — and we weren’t rating the teams’ prospect, but their 2013+ outlook.
Excellent point. Thanks for the response!
C’Mon man, I love Fangraphs, and I usually do not leave rude comments, but I am sorry. I do not believe you did enough research. We have guys who didn’t mention who top every single White Sox AND Brewers prospect. Luis Dorodomo and Kevius Sampson.
I mean, we have THE top system, and about ten guys who should be in the top 100.
You SP rankings are very bad to have SD last, I mean, have you heard of PETCO park? If they Padres raw staff should be around 25th, the park will push it up about 10-12 slots.
Overall, I’d rank hitting wise about 25th, pitching wise about 10th. so about 18th for the current rankings, averaged with a 1st farm system, we are about 9th.
I believe that you are not taking enough farm system into consideration. The White Sox have 3 prospects who are decent, 1 a reliever, 1 a former Padre who ranked around 20th in our system, and 1 above average pitching prospect. Considering the aging MLB White Sox team, they figure to fall even further from their poor season last year. I see just another big market bias.
I love fangraphs, and it is my favorite statistical analysis website, but I expect more from you guys.
Next time research the topic. The farm system does not need a Mike Trout, do Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw make the Dodgers a WS contender? NO, the team around the players make wins. Take the Rangers into consideration, they have no real super stars, Hamilton with his issues, Darvish hasn’t thrown an MLB pitch yet, etc. They do have a consistant, above average everywhere team.
PADRES FARM SYSTEM DEPTH:
C:
Yasimi Grandal- Top prospect
Austin Hedges- Very high upside, top defensive skills
Jason Hagerty- Was considered top Padre catching prospect going into last year, he could be a viable MLB catcher
1B:
Yonder Alonso-Top Prospect
Matt Clark-Look him up, he just needs a chance
Kyle Blanks-Maybe he can work out his injury
Cody Decker-Above average guy, who has tremendous power
2B:
Cory Spangenberg-Top Prospect
Logan Forsythe- Could be decent 2B
SS:
Jace Peterson-Supplemental draft pick, who could really play well, but not elite.
(We are thin at SS, but if Devin Marrerro falls to us, we have a top prospect at SS)
3B:
Jedd Gyorko-Top Prospect
James Darnell-could be average 3B.
OF:
Rymer Liriano-Incredible tools, finally busted out.
Jaff Decker-Big power, Matt Stairs prototype.
Luis Dorodomo-Next Rymer Liriano
SP:
(So many I am just listing)
Robby Erlin
Joe Wieland
Kevius Sampson
Casey Kelly
Joe Ross
Juan Oramas
Michael Kelly
John Barbarto
Relievers:
Brad Boxberger
Kevin Quakenbush
Mike Mikolas
Brad Brach
I bet these are the same people who ridiculed the Rays for years before they starting competing with their prospects. The Padres are doing something very similar. These are poor rankings overall – the Mets, Mariners, Indians and Royals all have less chance of success in 2012, 2013 and beyond given their poor major and minor league rosters. I would have thought 20th might have been closer to fair due to the Padres finances and ownership situation, but 26th is a joke and just plain wrong.
Park effects do not work that way. You can’t just say that your pitchers are suddenly 10 spots better because they’re in Petco. Because every single team that comes to San Diego to play will have better starting pitchers who will probably (across the big sample of 81 different home games) be helped the same amount by Petco.
Brad,
What does the first sentence under Baseball Ops mean?
“The Padres represent the first of five strong ops teams to land in the lower half of the rankings.”
Given that Oakland was ranked at #28 overall, #10 in Baseball Ops, aren’t they the first? I’m assuming by 1st, you mean the lowest rated team also with a Baseball Ops score in the top 15? Or if not, how am I supposed to interpret the above statement?
Thanks
Wow! What a ridiculous positioning. Best farm system in baseball with a good 1B, 3B, CF, C and LF (Once Quentin arrives back on the field). Good front office who made trades (or steals) such as Mat Latos for Alonso, Grandal, Boxberger and Volquez. And their starting rotation isn’t as bad as is being made out, especially considering the help they’ll get from Petco. Luebke is growing into a good number 2 with the chance to be an okay number 1, Stauffer is rediscovering what made him such a high draft pick and Volquez is a wildcard who could be anything. Add in Joe Weiland, Casey Kelly and Brad Brach waiting in the wings and I struggle to understand why there is such a downer on the pitching side of a team that has consistently had good performances from its pitchers.
I can only conclude that a subjective view of the Padres as a ‘joke’ team has affected the rankings (especially as 23rd, 11th, 25th, 13th doesn’t average out at 26th). I mean, are the Padres really in a worse position than the financially damaged Mets (who won’t win 70 games this year) or the soft-hitting Mariners (I bet Dave Cameron is getting some say on their ranking ;) )
This ranking of the Padres has made me completely disregard any of this process because frankly, it is ridiculous.
I have to agree with this for the most part, I too cannot fathom this lowly positioning. You have to like what San Diego is doing. They will make the writer of this article look silly this year and the next.
Orioles had a decent prospects once too. And they busted real bad. It’s not unlikely that half (etc) the Padres system busts too: then the team is left swimming just at or outside playoff contention for a few years and has to rebuild again.
It’s noteworthy that, as is mentioned in the methodology, this ranking is not simply the author’s ranking. It’s the ranking of all the Fangraphs writers based on their opinions of the team. So, your gripe here isn’t with this particular author’s article, but rather the collective decision making done by all the Fangraphs writers.
That’s not to say that they’re right and you’re wrong but they have a lot of collective knowledge about your favorite team while also having no particular agenda vis-a-vis the Padres when evaluating and ranking the teams.
And, of course Dave Cameron is getting some say on the Mariners, just as he did with all the other teams and just as all the other Fangraphs writers will have on the Mariners.
I guess the first comment to every one of these posts ought to be: “Cue the ‘You ranked the (insert name of favorite team here) too low because you’re biased against them!’” comments.
We only have like 3 fans.
Apparently we are ranked 11th 2013+. If you agree with this, you are either really sick and out of it, not a baseball fan, or on the East Coast and just saying, the Padres suck, who cares, I don’t care what everyone else says. I mean if I tick off their 3 fans, it is 3 angry readers.
#1 minor league system should not be ranked this low overall imo. The NL West is a backwards division? What does this mean? At the very least the NL West is as deep as the NL Central if that is what backwards means. Giants are favored to win the NL West last time I looked at Vegas odds, maybe it has changed?
I don’t see how this is an unfair ranking. The team, even before the whole Moorad thing, always ran on tight payrolls and the situation just got worse. The Mets and Dodgers are in financial ruin NOW, but in a few years they figure to be trotting out payrolls well north of $100M again. Their current on field talent is a longshot, at best, to compete in 2012 even in the unpredictable NL West. They just traded an elite first baseman and ace pitcher in consecutive off seasons which bookended a 71 win season in 2011. Other than having a loaded farm system, how are they that much different than the teams ranked below them? I think it’s a reasonable ranking.
He’s probably from the east coast…
The Padres shouldn’t be ranked any worse than 20th among organizations. Re-map your ranks. Please.
Are you serious? You rank the 1B position for the Padres at 29th in the league and then say the 1B Alonso is a bright spot. WTF?
You rank the starting pitchers, who ranked 3rd in MLB last season, dead last in MLB and they only lost one decent pitcher (Latos) and added Volquez who upside. Only two qualifying starters in baseball were worse than Harang. Luebke, by Fangraphs projections, should be a more valuable starter in 2012 than Latos was in 2011. So I don’t understand how you are projecting their starting pitching so low.
Padres RF ranked 23rd by Fangraphs in 2011, but you have them getting substantially WORSE in 2012? And that after one of the writers who contributes to your system. Cameron, said Venable is the most underrated player in baseball? WTF?
Padres new TV contract will pay them over $30 million in the first year and will increase to over $75 million by the end of the 20 year deal with $150 million in upfront cash. In 2012 their financials will be much higher than 25th. With only the Dodgers due to get new contracts for 2012-2013, the Padres rank closer to 15th -18th through 2013. A new ownership group by the end of 2012 should add even more financial strength as Moorad group and Moores after the divorce were very tight on cash.
The Padres organization has been signing good young player after good young player to long term deals this off season, so they are building a base for contending for 4-5 years and the TV contract will provide them with the ability to increase payroll from its current level of 55 million to the 80 million area for 2013-2014 and beyond. Enough to contend with a system as strong as the Padres.
I put them 20th for this season and a playoff contender in 2013-2014.
Was out of the country when this was debuted, so my comments are late. I actually think 26 is fair, if not too high, for the Padres. We’re looking at another year before a new owner is in place, which is likely to significantly affect the Padres draft and international spending. Besides, the #1 minor league system ranking is spurious for the Padres, as it is nearly unanimous that this team has no superstar prospects, and those superstar prospects are what have buoyed teams with high minors rankings in the past. The Padres have no ability to add an impact offensive player via free agency, and their ballpark would dissuade even marginally good offensive players from signing there; all while the front office shows no inclination to move in the fences or use a reverse-humidor concept in order to change this.
My opinion on Alonso — that he’s not likely to ever be an above-average starting 1B — has been stated here numerous times, and am confused how he can be simultaneously be considered a “bright spot” and be the 29th ranked 1B.
I wouldn’t put it past the Padres to lose over 100 games this season, while hitting under .240 in the process. No volume of 2 WAR prospects can rectify that, especially when you consider they’re ownerless, and unlikely to supplement their plethora of low ceiling prospects with a large calibur free agent anytime soon.