Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz takes a look at a trio of teams in our latest list of top clubs based on their roster of aged 26 and under players. Check out the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
A couple of really interesting teams in this batch of our young talent rankings.
Let’s go to number fifteen for the St. Louis Cardinals, whose system over the last couple of months has gotten a whole lot better.
Under John Bloom, these guys have totally committed to the rebuild, sending out Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, Brendan Donovan, Wilson Contreras during the off-season, and in return, they got a ton of prospects that’s boosted this farm system up significantly.
And then JJ Weatherholt is an absolute game changer, one of the top five to ten prospects in the entire sport.
This bat is real, it is going to play.
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This is someone who could be a perennial all-star in St. Louis, and kind of the next face of the franchise once the Cardinals emerge from this rebuild.
Let’s skip ahead to number twelve for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Are they ruining the sport, or are they not ruining the sport?
I don’t particularly care, because, oh boy, there’s a lot of talent in this organization.
You know, for all the hate the Dodgers get for spending money on free agents, they do spend a ton of money on their system, on player development and on scouting, and that is why, despite picking at the back of the first round year after year after year, the Dodgers have one of the best farms in the entire sport.
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Obviously, Roki Sasaki is the biggest mystery box in the entire sport.
He went from phenom, to scaredy cat, to elite reliever, all in the span of a year.
What do I expect this year?
I have no idea.
It’ll certainly be interesting.
Last team to talk about is the Boston Red Sox, who ranked number one on our whole board last year.
They have fallen from one to eleven, and there’s a couple different reasons for that.
The biggest is that Garrett Crochet, who finished second in AL Cy Young, he aged out, so he went from twenty-six, he’s gonna be twenty-seven this season.
He’s not eligible anymore.
That’s a good thing.
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When your good players are still good and get older, that hurts you in our process.
That certainly is not gonna be hurting the Red Sox at the big league level.
Now, they made some trades, sent some talent away to acquire some veteran pieces at the big league level.
Roman Anthony, we’re super high on.
Doesn’t take anything away from him.
Twenty twenty-five was not a year to remember for Christian Campbell, who signed a bit, big extension at the front end of that, and then was in Triple A by the end of the year.
We don’t really know what he is right now.
And then the same is kind of true for Marcelo Meyer, who was hurt, has not shown the ability to stay on the field.
Between those developments and Crochet and Will Yorbrae aging out, that’s why the Red Sox fall from one to eleven.
It’s not necessarily an indictment of the talent they have in the system.