Cellar Dwellers

Some guru at The Athletic has rated the MLB minor-league systems, and guess who comes in dead last? Yup, the White Sox. No better way to get the blood pressure moving this morning than to read a story that begins, “Yes, this is the worst farms system in baseball, but at least the White Sox used their prospects to build a legitimate contender.” How sincerely patronizing. Now, two days earlier, when he released his rankings, the guru put the Dodgers at number one. You’d have to check the comments’ section to get a sense why the team that won the World Series also has the top-ranked farm system. In a word, scouting. OK, I can see that. Now give me a series of stories not on players but the people who scout and sign them. The implication here is that the Sox have the worst scouts or scouting department in baseball. We’ve got analytics for this, analytics for that. Let’s take a look at scouting-department budgets and crunch numbers. Who spends more on scouting, the Dodgers or the team they beat back in 1959? Who spends their money smarter? Curious minds want to know.