Last week, I ranked the top 100 prospects and all 30 farm systems heading into the 2021 season. Now it's time to go deeper with my team-by-team rankings, starting with the American League.
A quick refresher on a key term you'll see throughout the team lists: Future Value, shortened to FV hereafter, as a term that sums up the value of a player into one number. It's graded on the 20-80 scouting scale. A low-end every-day player is a 50, which correlates to 2.0 WAR; a well above average position player, No. 3 starter or high-end closer is a 60, or somewhere around 3.0 WAR. I refrain from tossing out an 80 on minor leaguers because that would imply one is expected to be one of the top players in baseball.
While the top 100 is exactly that long, I rank every prospect who gets a 45+ or better FV grade that is 167 in total, so that rank is included here in the team lists. For every team, there are reports on the top 10 prospects and then varying numbers of others depending on the strength of the system. Broadly, it'll be everyone better than a 40 FV, then hand-picked interesting prospects who are 40 FVs.
And now on to my rankings.
Jump to a team:
BAL | BOS | CHW | CLE | DET
HOU | KC | LAA | MIN | NYY
OAK | SEA | TB | TEX | TOR