Latest prospect rankings highlight Buster Posey's biggest opportunity with SF Giants

MLB Pipeline revealed its top-100 prospect list for 2025 on Friday. Not surprisingly, the SF Giants had one representative in Bryce Eldridge. The farm system continues to be ranked as one of the worst in baseball, highlighting arguably the biggest opportunity for Buster Posey.

Latest prospect rankings highlight Buster Posey's biggest opportunity with SF Giants

The Houston Astros, New York Yankees, and Arizona Diamondbacks were the only other teams with one prospect apiece to make the cut. Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus each published top prospect lists recently as well, sharing a similar opinion that Eldridge is the only top prospect in the system.

It bears mentioning that the Giants have graduated several prospects in the past year. This includes Kyle Harrison, Hayden Birdsong, and Marco Luciano. Harrison and Luciano usually appeared on these lists as prospects, whereas Birdsong was just beginning to make an ascent before he exhausted prospect eligibility.

This is to point out that they have graduated prospects recently, so the farm system might be a bit thinner as a result. That said, the farm system has rarely even been ranked in the middle of the pack in recent seasons. They have often held a spot in the bottom-third and that is where they currently sit.

It has been a long time since the Giants churned out prospects regularly. The last real wave was around the time Buster Posey made his debut in 2009.

The Giants' championship run was built on some incredible success in the first round headlined by Posey, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner. They also found some late-round bloomers such as Sergio Romo, Brian Wilson, and Jonathan Sánchez. They rarely have had success in the international market but Pablo Sandoval's unlikely climb from unheralded prospect to franchise cornerstone was one of the few success stories.

As is the case with all these teams, that young core ages and breaks apart. If the well runs dry, then there is no succession plan and the competitive window closes. This is what inevitably happened with the Giants. Their struggles over the past decade have been mirrored by low success rates in the draft and internationally as well as in terms of development.

The problem with this is that teams have to leverage free agency to build a competitive roster. That is not only difficult to do, but costly as well. There is no doubt that Posey's unique experience on the baseball field will give him an edge in free agency. He can communicate to prospective free agents in a way that many front office executives cannot.

Posey identified shortstop as the biggest need when this offseason began. He went out and quietly signed the best option on the market in Willy Adames. This likely will not be his only success story in free agency.

However, this is an organization that needs to be built from the ground up as well. Both the scouting and development functions need to be evaluated as there just has not been enough success in those areas over the past 15 years.

The Giants have addressed this to some degree by hiring Randy Winn as the Vice President of Player Development. This is a critical role for this organization and there is a good chance that Posey's performance in running the front office will be tied closely to how well Winn operates in a player development role.

If the Giants are going to get out of their slump, they need to have success in the draft and internationally. They cannot compete in a division where several of the teams have had substantially more success on this front in recent years. This is whether it is by building a strong team through the farm system or using prospect capital to swing trades. On the other hand, the Giants have done neither.

While the Giants have high hopes with Bryce Eldridge, they need more reinforcements from the farm system. For Posey, inheriting one of the worst farm systems is the starting point and he will need to help bring that up for the major league club to see sustained success.