Rankings/List

Coming off Sunday night’s action during this Memorial Day weekend, the first quarter of the MLB regular season is now in the books, with all 30 teams logging at least 40 games. While some of the preseason favorites have already established a foothold at the top of their division race, there have been a few unexpected results, both on the field and at the betting window.

The Atlanta Braves have always put a focus on drafting, scouting and developing within the organization.

New president of baseball operations John Hart has put an even greater emphasis on the draft and restocking the farm system. Hart prioritizes the draft, as evidenced by the Braves' six selections in the first 89 picks of this year's draft —the most of any MLB team.

Even though it isn't emphasized as much in baseball, the draft is important in building winning teams. Since it takes so long for draftees to reach the majors in most cases, it's hard to evaluate them immediately after the fact.

Now, let's take a step back and look at the Cubs' last 10 first-round draft picks. They will each receive a letter grade based on whether or not they panned out, where they are in their career and what track they're on (if they still have time to develop).

The 2015 season is already at the quarter mark, and nothing has transpired the way we predicted.

But enough action has taken place that it's fair to read into some early goings-on and maybe even draw a conclusion or three about the remaining three quarters of the season.

...Like these 10 takeaways from the first portion of the campaign.

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Listening to the men in charge and the player, the easy conclusion is Troy Tulowitzki will remain the long-suffering Colorado Rockies shortstop. 

There have been some eye-opening starts to the baseball season this year at both the major league and minor league levels, but Tampa Bay Rays starter Blake Snell takes the cake.

The left-hander has rattled off 46 straight scoreless innings to start the year, as he appears to be the latest in a long line of homegrown starting pitchers to come through the Tampa Bay Rays farm system.

He's not the only one turning heads down at the farm, though, as there are more minor leaguers putting together some impressive stat lines, prospect or otherwise.

The Atlanta Braves (18-19) will see more youth on the field as the season progresses.

Right-hander Mike Foltynewicz has graduated off this list and made three starts for the Braves (2-0, 4.24 ERA). Meanwhile, fellow righty Williams Perez will make his first start for the Braves on Wednesday after a brief stint in the bullpen, according to MLB.com's Mark Bowman.

When we last looked at the stock values of MLB's top projected trade targets roughly two weeks ago, I wrote about the volatility of the marketplace—and how a team's fortune (or misfortune) could change the composition of the marketplace.

Report-card season can be a stressful time of year. Just ask clubs like the Oakland Athletics and the Milwaukee Brewers, who will be racing to their mailboxes to snag those progress reports before their owners find out just how poorly they've done.

While Oakland and Milwaukee have been among the game's biggest duds, an array of clubs have aced the opening quarter of the MLB season.

Over the past several seasons, Cubs fans couldn't help but focus on their farm system, if nothing else to get their minds off of the lackluster product at the major league level. Now that the Cubs are competitive, their minor league system has slipped back into the background.

However, continuing to churn out young talent in the farm system is extremely important, and the Cubs still have a number of talented young players getting ready to move to Chicago.