From the Desk of the Commish

One of the most enjoyable aspects of running a BDBL franchise is "discovering" some pimply-faced teenager in the low minor leagues and watching him develop into a low-cost, high-impact player. Developing a good farm system requires a wide depth of knowledge in the game of baseball, a lot of free time for research and-- more than anything else --a lot of luck. The question is: How important is it to have a good farm system?

If a team ranks #1 in this survey, does that bode well for the team's future? Conversely, if a team ranks dead-last, does that mean nothing but doom and gloom? In order to answer that question, I collected all of the rankings from each of our BDBL farm reports over the past six years. I then matched those rankings to the average number of wins each team recorded in year+1, year+2, etc., through year+5. Here are the results:

Rank	Year 0	Year+1	Year+2	Year+3	Year+4	Year+5	Average
1	77	82	97	89	89	108	90
2	92	94	96	92	92	73	90
3	71	86	74	79	71	73	76
4	82	94	91	90	91	76	87
5	75	82	83	71	92	86	81
6	88	75	83	80	70	67	77
7	87	76	97	91	107	64	87
8	87	82	79	83	82	76	82
9	79	90	84	90	87	88	86
10	82	83	79	91	76	81	82
11	86	76	78	80	69	89	80
12	81	87	83	70	95	102	86
13	77	80	88	81	74	91	82
14	75	69	65	89	66	91	76
15	86	76	72	76	94	71	79
16	59	66	47	42	75	80	61
17	78	81	77	67	83	66	75
18	87	89	100	106	86	102	95
19	81	81	71	72	79	87	79
20	83	79	72	80	88	58	77
21	83	86	72	72	71	52	73
22	77	65	68	79	73	70	72
23	75	71	91	79	56	78	75
24	76	71	78	70	61	91	75
Correl	-0.20	-0.51	-0.41	-0.33	-0.48	-0.15	-0.51

This graph shows a fairly strong correlation between Farm Report ranking and wins. The #1 and #2 ranked teams have performed very well, averaging 90 wins over the next six seasons, while the bottom six teams averaged fewer than 80 wins.

The one outlier, of course, is that teams ranked #18 in this study seem to do the best of anyone, averaging a mind-boggling 95 wins over the next six years. This outlier is caused mostly by the 2000 Allentown Ridgebacks, who ranked #18 in that year's study, but went on to win 405 games from 2002-2005. In '02, the Ridgebacks (then known as the "Boise Bastards") farm consisted of guys named Buddy Yen, Carlos Mendez, Carlos Paredes, Corey Thurman and Joseph Delgado. No, I don't have the foggiest idea who those guys are, either. But the following season, Tom DiStefano took over, and the Ridgebacks' farm ranking jumped to #4 overnight.

Okay, enough of the intro. How does your team rank THIS year? See the chart below. This year's panel of experts includes John Sickels (whose rankings are double-counted thanks to his chickenshit method of ranking hitters and pitchers separately), Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Deric McKamey (Baseball HQ), Bryan Smith (Baseball Analysts) and RotoAmerica. I've also added a new column, showing the average ranking per franchise. For what it's worth, this average corresponds to franchise wins at a 44% rate.

	Total Pts	2006 Rank	2005 Rank	2004 Rank	2003 Rank	2002 Rank	2001 Rank	2000 Rank	Avg Rank
LAU	3,626	1	2	6	19	2	3	7	5.7
MAN	2,649	2	3	7	8	12	16	22	10.0
BCJ	2,506	3	12	22	20	21	23	21	17.4
KAN	2,491	4	5	4	9	17	11	4	7.7
SCS	2,176	5	9	13	2	3	10	17	8.4
VIL

2006 BDBL Farm Report