DOUBLE THREATS
A productive farm system often—but not always—begets winning in the major leagues.
Winning in the majors consequently leads to lower draft position and often to trades that sacrifice future value for present. For those reasons, winning major league clubs tend not to have sustained farm system success while they are winning.
But there are exceptions to every rule.
To find those glorious exceptions, I determined every team’s overall rank in the major league standings as well as their standing in Baseball America organization talent rankings, which since 1984 have annually assessed each organization’s farm system.
Major league success and farm system standing were then evaluated in five-year intervals, beginning in 1984, to find the top combinations of the past 35 years. Each organization’s winning percentage () and average standing in BA organization talent rankings () are presented for the selected five-year windows.
