Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos are the Giants’ best prospects, according to FanGraphs

The Giants drafted Joey Bart only a week ago and he’s already been declared the Giants’ best prospect per FanGraphs and the 57th-best in all of baseball. It’s the highest ranking of a Giants prospect on any recent FanGraphs prospect ranking, and Bart has taken their crown of the team’s best prospect from Christian Arroyo, who was, of course, traded to the Rays in the Evan Longoria deal.

Heliot Ramos’ appearance at #89 shows how much of an impression he’s made in about 90 games across two seasons. FanGraphs considered adding him to their preseason top 100 prospect rankings, but he just missed the cut. What a difference four months makes.

But just to give you some added context, here was their list of the 10 best Giants as of last August after they released their summer top 100 prospect list:

1. Christian Arroyo
2. Tyler Beede
3. Bryan Reynolds
4. Heliot Ramos
5. Chris Shaw
6. Andrew Suarez
7. Sandro Fabian
8. Steven Duggar
9. C.J. Hinojosa
10. Joan Gregorio

None of those players were on that summer top 100 prospect list despite Arroyo and Beede making it onto the preseason 2017 list (at #69 and #86, respectively), so Bart and Ramos could very well follow suit and lose their standing in just a couple of months, though that seems very unlikely given their ages and experience.

The most recent ranking of the Giants’ system was in May:

1. Heliot Ramos
2. Stephen Duggar
3. Alexander Canario
4. Tyler Beede
5. Garrett Williams
6. Chris Shaw
7. Jacob Gonzalez
8. Andrew Suarez
9. D.J. Snelten
10. Aramis Garcia

So, yeah, expect that list to see a significant revision come August.

FanGraphs altered their top prospect rankings a bit from the preseason list by not limiting it to only the top 100. They decided to include every player projected to have a Future Value of 50 or better, which wound up being 131 players total.

For their purposes,

Future Value attempts to combine a prospect’s potential (reasonable ceiling and floor) as well as his chance of realizing it (including injury-related risks or proximity to the majors) into one tidy, value-based number.

So when you see Bart, who has yet to play an inning of minor league ball, and Ramos, who’s not even 19 years old, with Future Values of 50, it means they’re projected to be average future major league baseball players on the scouting 20-80 scoring scale. A 50 player is basically a .260 hitter who averages 15-18 home runs a season. I don’t scoff at that because when you consider how many players are drafted and how many play across the entire minor league system, making it to the major leagues is a miracle, and being an average player once there to be almost a double miracle. An average major league hitter is so much better at baseball than most people on the entire planet, and it takes the same amount of effort by scouts, coaches, and front offices to find them as it does a superstar player.

The Giants don’t have what the Braves have — 14 prospects on the list with Future Values of 50 or better — but the two recent top draft picks they project to be future stars/contributors are considered by others outside of the organization as having the same impact. It’s not always about making sure people are saying nice things about you and your choices, but there’s something to be said about industry peers and informed outsiders essentially checking your work and agreeing with your conclusions.