Baseball America: Nats farm system now No. 9

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/nationalsjournal/2008/01/baseball_america_nats_farm_sys.html

Jim Bowden indicated this would be the case in an interview on XM Radio within the last week, but it's interesting to see it on paper. Keep in mind: The Nationals were 30th -- ahem, last -- in 2007. According to BA executives, the leap from 30th to ninth -- 21 spots -- is the second-largest this decade. (Nationals' release has Texas jumping 24 slots, from 28th to fourth, this year, helped by major trades of Eric Gagne and Mark Teixeira.)

The sunny side of this: The Nationals said they would put money into scouting and player development and turn around the farm system, and by at least this measure, it is working.

The cloudy side: These rankings don't gurantee anything. There's no such thing as a sure thing in baseball.

But ... this is at least a quasi-tangible sign that things are pointed in the right direction.

The numbers:

BA's Top 10 Organizational Rankings:
1. Tampa Bay
2. Boston
3. Cincinnati
4. Texas
5. New York Yankees
6. Los Angeles Dodgers
7. Colorado
8. Atlanta
9. Washington
10. Los Angeles Angels

Washington's Top 20 Prospects
1. Chris Marrero, 1B
2. Ross Detwiler, LHP
3. Collin Balester, RHP
4. Michael Burgess, OF
5. Jack McGeary, LHP
6. Josh Smoker, LHP
7. Jordan Zimmermann, RHP
8. Justin Maxwell, OF
9. Colton Willems, RHP
10. John Lannan, LHP
11. Jake Smolinski, OF
12. Tyler Clippard, RHP
13. Adam Carr, RHP
14. Ian Desmond, SS
15. Garrett Mock, RHP
16. Stephen King, SS
17. Esmailyn Gonzalez, SS
18. Shairon Martis, RHP
19. Brad Peacock, RHP
20. Kory Casto, OF/3B

BA's Nationals/Expos Organizational Rankings:
2001: 21
2002: 16
2003: 29
2004: 30
2005: 26
2006: 24
2007: 30
2008: 9

Couple of things to point out. The losses to free agency of Alfonso Soriano and Jose Guillen gave the Nationals extra picks that yielded Nos. 4 (Burgess), 6 (Smoker) and 7 (Zimmermann) on this board. It's also worth mentioning that the only players on the list who were in the system when the Lerners were awarded the team in May 2006 were Balester, Maxwell, Desmond and Casto. The rest were aquired in the last two drafts or by trade (Clippard, Martis, Mock).