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This article was written by Jesse Lund. One of the fascinating aspects of ranking farm systems of every organization across baseball is that, to some level, it's kind of subjective. There's a general understanding on the level of Cubs-good-Padres-bad, but what's the real difference between each team? How do you mark the difference in system quality between, for example, Minnesota and Cleveland? Part of the challenge in finding that differentiation is that there is no single consensus on how prospects themselves are evaluated. Jonathan Mayo and Keith Law and John Sickels and Chris Mitchell will all rate prospects differently, which impacts how the system as a whole is ranked. The best part is that all of the experts understand that prospect ranking isn't an exact science, which is why we see a vast majority of any team's top prospects weigh heavily towards the 45 to 50 range on the 20-80 scale regardless of who's doing the ranking. There's a real desire to separate those few gems at the top of the pile.Have a look at the distribution of the ratings of every club's Top 30 prospects, according to current lists at MLB.com. For the uninitiated, keep in mind that 50 is considered average. Every step down is a step below average, and every step up is another mark above. If that chart's results look heavily skewed, it's because they are. Out of 900 prospects, 590 of them (66%) were rated as a 45. 184 (20%) were given a rating of 50. Only three out of every 20 prospects end up on either side of that range. Separating the good and elite (or otherwise) players is not only an exercise in minimizing risk in evaluation - can you imagine a world where there were 50 prospects rated as a 70, for example - but because the middle is so overwhelming it impacts those subtle separations between organizations as a whole. Moving on to how this can help us to determine the individual strengths of any organization's minor league system, it's pretty clear that we're running into a couple of issues: We're only looking at a club's top 30 prospects, those ratings are only sourced from one outlet, and there's no standardized way to, for example, award or penalize a club based on how their top 30 prospects were graded. Whatever we end up with here, there's no result that's going to resolutely identify exactly how well or poorly an organization's farm system is doing at any given time on an objective scale. What a study like this can do, however, is give us an idea of the differences are between a grouping of teams. Even though we're looking at the results of subjective data, it can be useful in helping us understand just how an organization that rates as a top five system differs from one that's middle of the pack. For anyone who's curious: no, the Twins' Top 30 does not include Byron Buxton. He's officially expired his rookie status, thereby eliminating his status as a prospect, so everybody slides up a spot and our friend Lewin Diaz joins the list at number 30. I've kept it simple. Each prospect is awarded a number of points equal to his overall rating. Corey Seager is worth 70. Exactly ten - yes, ten - Angels' prospects were awarded 40. Totals are divided by 30 to get an average, which is a nice reference to show how teams rank on a scale that no doubt moves by increments every few weeks. There are other ways to award value - 7 points for a 70, 5 points for a 60, -2 for a 40, whatever you like - but I wanted to stay away from arbitrary values. The strongest system here belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 1,475 total points give them an average of 49.2. The weakest system is, of course, the Angels, whose 1,315 points give them an average of 43.8. What we find is that the difference between a top five team, like the Rockies, and a club in the middle, like the Yankees, is actually fairly significant. They differ by just 35 points overall, but that's asking the Bombers' system to slide seven of their top 30 prospects up a level. Maybe it's tempting to think it would be easy to slide seven of those 45-rated players up to a 50, but that would give the Yankees 15 prospects with a 50 grade. It's not realistic considering the distribution of players with that mark across the league. Instead, the Yankees would have to turn one 45-rated player into a 65 and another into a 60. Considering there are only 20 of 900 prospects (2.2%) right now who are rated 60 or higher, magically finding two of them to drop into a system is highly unlikely. Turning three 45s into 55s might sound more doable, but that would be asking the Yankees to double the number of prospects already at that level. When a front office is challenged to turn around a system, I think looking at information like this helps us to see how big of a task that can be. There are a couple of next steps available that I'll try to take up in coming weeks. I'd like to incorporate more information from other systems, and I'd also be curious to look at the age and level of prospects to give a larger cross-section. Click here to view the article