Three weeks ago, I sent a survey to 68 of my contacts in baseball. The survey consisted of four questions, all connected to pitching development and acquisition in the majors and minors. Who is the best? Who is the worst? And which organizations will improve the most? I received 54 anonymous responses.

Below, I’ll show the results of the survey, followed by my tiered ranking from #1 to #30 of the best pitching development and acquisition organizations in MLB. This ranking is heavily informed by the results of the survey, with some massaging of the results based on how I interpreted responses. I’ll be releasing a YouTube video walking through the minutiae of the survey and some of the results you see below, so make sure to check that out.

Some of the content below will be cut off if you’re reading this inside your email. Navigate to my Substack site to see the entire post.

Here’s a quick rundown of what roles/titles the survey recipients have.

Coaches – Think pitching coaches, pitching coordinators, in the major and minor leagues

Front Office – This is all pitching folk asked who I considered higher up than on-field folk. It includes multiple Directors of Pitching, AGMs, GMs, etc.

Non-MLB Affiliated – I added these individuals in because I believed their perspective would be valuable. It includes facility owners, non-MLB trainers, and a few agents.

The reason I combined MLB and MiLB, along with acquisition and development into one question, was to force the survey participants to make calculations about what they value when considering who is the “best” at development and acquisition. They were then presented with an opportunity in question two to write brief thoughts on what factors they considered, which we’ll review shortly. How much more does major league development matter compared to minor league development? How much does pure development matter relative to acquiring good arms? In a sample of 50+ respondents, I hoped that differences in how people approached the question would even out. And I’m happy with the results.

Below is a word/phrase ranking of terms mentioned most frequently in the open-ended question above. Here are a few direct sentences from respondents I found interesting…