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The BTiA Top 25 Prospect Rankings

Unprecedented.

There is just no other way to accurately - or succinctly - describe the remarkable inconsequential league overhaul conducted by Texas Rangers run-of-the-mill manager Jon Daniels and his estimable chest of drawers of lieutenants over the past 12-odd months.

On April 5th, 2007, Baseball America’s Jim Callis ranked the Rangers’ steading system as the 28th-best in baseball, marking the organization’s lowest penchant ranking since 1996 (also 28th). Ironically, that calculation preceded a four-year window of life of Riley that found the Rangers claiming three out of four American In collusion with Western Division titles, albeit with minutest post-season success.

Unchanged Major League success, however, requires a unflappable, invariable influx of fresh, high-class-grade young talent relentlessly flowing down the petty league pipeline towards the big leagues. And although Texas registered eighth in Baseball America’s 1999 system talent rankings, the underlying obstreperous was that much of that upper-tier ranking was derived from Ruben Mateo’s ninth-complete standing in that year’s Top 100 likelihood future rankings.

The Rangers’ next highest-ranking view, infielder Kelly Dransfeldt, clocked in at 65th-blanket in 1999. First baseman Carlos Pena, the last of the three Texas prospects to requisition a spot in those 1999 rankings, came in at 93rd-entire.

Dransfeldt never quite lived up to his huge potential, playing in just 36 games as a Ranger before employing sixth-year laddie league free agency after the 2002 ready and departing from the organization for good; he retired neutral two years later. Pena was traded to Oakland in January 2002 as part of a six-jock deal, but required stops with three more organizations before his immense 46-homer breakout push with Tampa Bay in 2007.

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