Weekend BP: Giants farm system ranked 11th by Kiley McDaniel

A few days ago, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel, a very well-respected figure in prospecting, released his annual list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. It featured four San Francisco Giants prospects: Marco Luciano (No. 30), Luis Matos (No. 42), Kyle Harrison (No. 50), and Joey Bart (No. 72).

Now he’s released his ranking of every organization’s farm, and placed the Giants at No. 11.

Here’s what he had to say about the Giants, who he has smack dab in the middle of the NL West, behind the Arizona Diamondbacks (No. 5) and Los Angeles Dodgers (No. 8), but ahead of the San Diego Padres (No. 15) and Colorado Rockies (No. 23).

The Giants are the trendy new kid on the block joining the Dodgers and Rays as one of the darlings of the industry for how they somehow seem to make every player in their orbit better. We know from the past that there’s real payroll upside here and there are still a handful of holes to address this offseason.

The top of the prospect list is a nice mix of lower-minors upside and near big league ready regulars, so that will make Farhan Zaidi’s next couple of offseason to-do lists a bit simpler with some rookies stepping into key spots every season and a shot for a star to emerge by the time the current steady veterans have moved on.

For a middle-of-the-pack ranking, that’s a very happy blurb.

The Giants farm been all over the place in organization rankings, with optimism from Baseball Prospectus, which ranked them No. 2, pessimism from Baseball America, which ranked them No. 17, and tepidness from McDaniel and The Athletic’s Keith Law, who ranked them No. 9.

How many days has it been since the owners locked out the players?

81 days and, unfortunately, counting.