The Angels have discovered a draft and player development market inefficiency

There are two things that make a top prospect a top prospect – tools and projectability. Physical gifts along with youth are paramount to prospects' future value, but their results are never guaranteed until much farther down the road...unless you're in the Los Angeles Angels pipeline that is.

Farm system rankings going into 2025 are still coming out, so the best baseline for understanding currently is to look at 2024's most updated list to get an idea of where everyone stands. According to FanGraphs, the Halos' farm system ranks dead last. Despite this, many of the league's scouts and executives had high praise for some of the Angels' most impressive youngsters. What's more, at least one MLB insider believes that several of the top prospects will make their debuts in 2025.

The pathway has already been laid out by the current young nucleus at the big-league level. Zach Neto, a first-round pick in 2022, made his debut in 2023 and established himself as a burgeoning star in 2024. Nolan Schanuel, a first-round pick in 2023, made his MLB debut that same year and has shown promise at the big-league level. Ben Joyce, a third-round pick in 2022, has already spent parts of the past two seasons at the highest level and looks to be the bullpen anchor this upcoming season.

All of the players listed above each have fewer than 50 games of minor league experience under their belts. The next wave is also likely to arrive before reaching that threshold. That's all because the Angels have been intentional about the prospects they target at the top of drafts and in recent trades.

The Angels are exploiting a market inefficiency and should do so to the fullest extent

Consider the difference between Zach Neto and Logan O'Hoppe. They're only a year apart in age, but O'Hoppe was drafted in 2018 versus 2022 for Neto. Other than toiling in the minors for a few more years, O'Hoppe was a 23rd-round pick by the Phillies while Neto was a first-rounder. Yet O'Hoppe's journey from draft to the majors is the much more common route, even for top picks.

By leveraging their premium draft assets on near-major-league-ready talent, the Angels open the door for the raw and toolsy players to have a better shot at reaching their full potential by forcing their guys to face the most adversity. Since their top draft picks have been put on the fast track, minor league coaches and player development staffers have more time to work with younger, raw, and less developed prospects to unlock their potential.

Prospect luster is a fickle thing. A hitter can hit a fastball a mile, but if he never figures out how to handle a breaking pitch he can turn from a bar of gold to a lump of coal overnight. The same holds true for that hotshot hurler who can light up the radar gun but can never consistently throw strikes. Most teams bet on those tools and will take raw prospects at the top of the draft, hoping that their coaches can iron out those kinks over the course of several years. However, more often than not, those kinks are fatal flaws in actuality.

The next phase to really supercharge the effectiveness of this process is to spend big on amateur international free-agent talent. While bonus pool restrictions are firm in how much teams can spend on given international prospects, using those funds wisely is the key to success.

The Angels are seemingly on the right track in this regard given how they handled last year's class. The Angels signed 15 players on the opening day of last year's international free-agent signing period, but wisely distributed 70% of their money to their top three prospects.

When we're talking about 16 and 17-year-olds from far-off lands like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, there is a lot of inherent risk that these literal kids will never pan out. However, by devoting more development time to them by fast-tracking top draft picks, the team is better able to optimize their chances of success.

Marrying these two strategies might never produce sexy farm system rankings, but it can create a steady pipeline of impact talent flowing toward the big leagues, which is the ultimate goal at the end of the day. Until the rest of the league catches up, it seems the Angels have a real advantage as trailblazers going down this path.

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