Seattle Mariners Farm System a Recipe for Success: A Historical Analysis

The Seattle Mariners have one of the best farm systems in the MLB. Can past farm system strength predict future Major League success?

Baseball is so different than other professional leagues. There are thousands of minor leaguers spread out across multiple levels. Many of which will never even sniff the pros. For the Seattle Mariners, they finally have one of the top farm systems in the game.

It’s been quite a long time since the Mariners have been in this situation. In 2002, they had the second-best farm system in all of baseball. Nearly 20 years later, they are in about the same situation, with a top farm system for the first time since.

How important is a farm system? Is there an actual correlation between success in building your team and success at the major league level?

That’s the question that has been on my mind lately. The Mariners are in the best position as a franchise that they have been in, for quite some time. Not a lot of salary on the team, plenty of youth, youth that has gained experience, and a nice starting pitcher who is coming into his own since joining Seattle, Marco Gonzalez.

Will the fact that the Mariners have a great looking farm system lead to results? Is there any type of pattern from the last ten years that would show we could be on the verge of not just watching meaningful September baseball, but baseball in October… that involves the Seattle Mariners?

In the end, what we are here to do is simple. Taking a look at the top three farm systems from each season over the last decade, and seeing what level of success they were able to achieve. Let’s start back in 2011, and see how they did. I took them from either Baseball America, Bleacher Report, or Baseball Prospectus, depending on which one I could find, and which wasn’t behind a paywall.

Oh, for fun, let’s put the Seattle Mariners in there also so we can see how bad we’ve been… I mean where they’ve ranked as well.