​Back in November 2025, I broke down Fangraphs’ current rankings for the Cardinals’ farm system. It’s been nearly eight months since then, and we’re about to enter a period when systems get reshuffled quite a bit. The draft is coming up in a couple of weeks, bringing new players into the pipeline. As players graduate to MLB, the prospect list thins, and the influx of draftees further trims the lower end of the system to create space. All of this will shape how each organization looks, and each year it happens to resemble a thorough makeover.
First, I want to point you toward a recent article by Ben Clemons, a VEB alum, which describes an update to how prospect valuation is approached. In Fangraphs’ methodology, prospect valuations help drive how they rank each system. The article goes into more detail about the method. I haven’t had time to digest every permutation yet, but my initial impression is that this update nudges Fangraphs further away from other outlets that tend to overweight the top-end prospects when ranking systems. It’s not my preferred approach, though it may be more predictive. I’ll need to study it more to determine whether my early read is on target. If it’s accurate, teams with a larger number of lower-end prospects could see more pronounced increases in their valuations this cycle.
Back in November, Fangraphs had the Cardinals’ system ranked No. 1 in all of baseball (a level of optimism not shared by every publication). They examined and evaluated 49 Cardinal prospects—defined as anyone with a Future Value (FV) of 35 or higher in their assessments. The overall projected valuation of those 49 players was pegged at $283 million, nearly double what Fangraphs estimated for the Cardinals the previous year.
First and foremost, a good portion of those players will have graduated from the prospect list as they accumulate MLB service time. This is a universal phenomenon across systems, but it’s likely most impactful for the Cardinals, who are among the youngest teams in baseball and therefore have more graduations than average.
Over the intervening eight months, a mix of injuries and varying performance—both positive and negative—will shape individual player evaluations, which in turn influences the system’s overall valuation. Without getting too deep into the weeds, I’d offer a cautious guess that Tink Hence’s injury history and his performance trajectory have diminished his once-premium prospect status and lowered his valuation. I’ll be examining his situation more closely as we move along.
On the surface, the updated methodology has shifted dollar valuations enough to make direct comparisons with prior rankings less straightforward. For example, the Cardinals’ system is now valued at $485 million, yet it sits 10th overall in MLB. Interestingly, Fangraphs now lists 52 players in the valuation, up from 49 in November—an addition of three players between the November system ranking and the February player updates. I can’t pinpoint all three contributors, but it seems likely that Carlos Carrion and Juan Rujano are among them. In any case, the changes also appear to reflect an emphasis on broader depth rather than only top-end strength, which can alter how the system is perceived in SEO-light discussions and in how teams’ pipelines are evaluated overall.