Some may remember that a year ago I did a study of the progress of the 2007 Baseball America Top 30 rankings. You may recall that BA ranked the system 23rd that year and based on the cumulative positive WAR at the end of last season the Cardinal system was 11th.

I am currently updating the 2007 data but have stopped after finishing the six lowest teams from last year. Baseball Reference has not completed the WAR calculations for 2012. So I will wait awhile and update the study later in the year and report the findings.

An interesting sidenote. BA ranked the Cardinal system 24th after the 2010 season. Since then 18 of the 30 top ranked Cardinals have played in the major leagues including Craig, Lynn, Miller, Kelly, Carpenter Salas, Descalso and of course Kozma. Also included in the top 30 were Cox, Martinez, Jenkins, Blair, Swagerty, Gast, Reifer, Kopp and Oscar Taveras (ranked 24th). They missed on Robinson, Adams, Dickson, Rosenthal, Fick and Freeman all of whom have played in the majors.

The Cardinal Nation top 30 at the end of 2010  included 15 who have played in the major leagues. One could conclude that while BA picks the top 30 Cardinals as well as we do they do a woeful job of comparing our system with the rest of the major leagues.

So much for a Cardinals bias over at BA.  Callis says STL has the #1 Farm System in MLB on twitter.

Looks like they will be #1 with Sickles too. He has rated 23 of the teams and the Cardinals have the most top rated pitchers. They still have Seattle to go and they have some potentially high rated pitchers who could all get an A rating. The Cardinals have 2 A's; Taveras and Miller. So far there are only 6 other A rated players among the other 22 teams. No one else has 2.

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2013/1/2/3829866/mi nor-league-system-rankings-based-on-sickels-rankin gs

looks like you will be right on Sickels having the cards farm system at #1 - with 5 organizations to go they set at #1.