Are the A’s accelerating prospect development?

Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY SportsLast week I took a look at the state of the A’s farm system as a whole, and in general there was a lack of optimism in that post outside of a few key names. Here I want to expand more into how the system has formed into what it has, and before looking into talent acquisition I think it’s worth taking a shallow dive into the player development for the organization. Generally, player development is hard to quantify, as while we can put numbers to how much value a team got from a draft or trade it’s hard to judge whether any perceived gain or lack of value was based on the scouting aspect, development aspect, or sheer good/bad luck. What we can take a look at is the general path of development players have taken in the system and how that compares to the historic Oakland Athletics plan.

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