MLB Pipeline ranks SF Giants farm system as among the worst in baseball

MLB Pipeline published its updated top-30 prospect lists for every team in baseball this week. On Friday, they ranked the farm systems, with the SF Giants system coming in at No. 28.

MLB Pipeline ranks SF Giants farm system as among the worst in baseball

The only farm systems worse than the Giants are the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels at No. 29 and No. 30, respectively.

Oddly enough, I put together an article in 2019 highlighting Farhan Zaidi's biggest opportunity as the head of the front office. This was about a ranking by Baseball America that had the Giants at No. 28. Six years later, they are back in that same spot.

Bryce Eldridge is the only top-100 prospect in MLB Pipeline's ranking, coming in at No. 24. On the other hand, the Angels have two prospects in the top-100 ranking, both coming in the back half of that ranking. The distinction here is that a player with Eldridge's ranking has the upside to become an above-average everyday player or even an All-Star, whereas players in the back end of the rankings tend to become role players.

MLB Pipeline does a nice job of recognizing that the Giants' farm system is in a transition phase. Marco Luciano, Hayden Birdsong, and Kyle Harrison have all graduated within the past year.

If they were all still considered prospects, the farm system would be ranked quite a bit higher. I should caution that MLB Pipeline includes its recent rankings of each farm system with the Giants farm system coming in no higher than No. 14 in the past two years.

While they would be quite a bit better, they still might not be in the top-10 in baseball. That is an unfair exercise as every team has prospects graduate, so it is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Following the graduations, the farm system is leaning on the younger side. The Giants have some young, untested talent such as Josuar Gonzalez, Rayner Arias, Jhonny Level, and Walker Martin. Only Martin has reached full-season ball, and that was a 25-game stint with the San Jose Giants at the end of 2024. There is a pretty big developmental gap between Eldridge along with James Tibbs III or Carson Whisenhunt and some of the better younger prospects in the system at the moment.

The good news is that they can only go up from here. The Giants have struggled badly at identifying and developing talent over the past 10 years. Their struggles on the field have largely coincided with their failures at building up the farm system.

These struggles also highlight Buster Posey's biggest opportunity. It was the same opportunity for the previous regime that never got fully realized. For the Giants to become a competitive team in the NL again, they will need the farm system to feed the major league roster more than it has in the past decade.