Baseball’s prospect season kicked off this month with the release of rankings by ESPN’s Keith Law. The news was not encouraging for the Diamondbacks. Not only did they not have a single prospect ranked in the Top 100, their farm system was rated dead-last among the 30 major-league teams.
When reached this week, executives and scouts with other clubs didn’t take issue with the assessment. They might not have ranked the Diamondbacks last, but they seemed to view them as a sure-fire bottom-third system that reasonably could be placed anywhere among the bottom five. Some struggled to name the Diamondbacks’ top two or three prospects off the top of their heads.