Last week, I ranked the top 100 MLB prospects and all 30 MLB farm systems entering the 2024 season. Now let's take a deeper dive into each system with my team-by-team rankings, starting with the National League followed by the American League lists later this week.
A quick refresher on a key term you'll see throughout the team lists: future value, shortened to FV hereafter, sums up the value of a player into one number. It's graded on the 20-80 scouting scale. A low-end everyday player is a 50, which correlates to 2.0 WAR; a well-above-average position player, No. 3 starter or high-end closer is a 60, or somewhere around 3.0 WAR. I refrain from tossing out an 80 on minor leaguers because that would imply one is expected to be one of the top players in baseball. FV also scales to trade value, so a 50 FV in the low minors has a wide range of potential outcomes, but has trade value similar to a big league ready everyday player with a lower upside.
While the top 100 is exactly that long, I rank every prospect who gets a 45+ or better FV grade, so that rank is included here in the team lists. For every team, there are reports on the top 10 prospects and then varying numbers of others depending on the strength of the system. Broadly, it'll be everyone better than a 40 FV, then handpicked interesting prospects who are 40 FVs. For reference, a 40 FV is what I'd term a "common" prospect in old school baseball card parlance. That is to say, not one without value but every org has and has access to (rounds three through five of the draft are basically all 40 FVs right when they sign) many of these players every year.
This year I've left off the 35+ FV tier from the rankings as there were a number on each team of this fringy sort of prospect but they rarely matter in the season where I rank them in that tier, so I chose to focus my time and words on the better prospects. For farm rankings continuity, I still ranked players in this tier.
Now on to my 2024 NL rankings.
Jump to a franchise:
NL East: ATL | MIA | NYM | PHI | WSH
NL Central: CHC | CIN | MIL | PIT | STL
NL West: ARI | COL | LAD | SD | SF