2024 MLB farm system rankings: Post draft, trade deadline - ESPN

A great deal has changed since we ranked all 30 MLB farm systems going into the 2024 season, with much of that change coming in the past few weeks with the next wave of prospects from the MLB draft and then front offices adding — or subtracting — young players at the MLB trade deadline.

Now that the dust has settled on two of the most impactful periods for any farm system, it's time to see how all 30 organizations stack up and what has changed most since Opening Day.

These rankings were done, for the most part, the same way as my previous versions. The dollar amounts for each farm system come from projecting what each is expected to do, using historical examples. With that, it's pretty easy to project how much they'll be paid in their six-plus cost-controlled years for that projected performance, adjust for time value of money/performance, apply the price teams pay per win on the free agent market for how much that performance is worth and poof: each player has a dollar value. Then, you simply add up the values for each prospect and have the surplus value of the whole farm system. The latest version of these calculations was done at FanGraphs by Craig Edwards.

Current top prospect: Jackson Holliday, SS

Preseason ranking: 1st, $371 million

What has happened since: Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser graduated from my top 100 list to the O's big league lineup and a couple potential starting pitchers from the system (Cade Povich and Chayce McDermott) made their big league debuts. The Orioles made some trades sending away prospects for major league help, shipping out Connor Norby, Mac Horvath, Jackson Baumeister, Seth Johnson and Moises Chace among my top prospects who were traded at the deadline. While that is a lot of