With two months to go in the 2016 MLB season, a number of teams are already looking ahead to the future after selling at the deadline.
That's exactly what we'll do here.
Baseball is nearly impossible to predict on a year-in and year-out basis, but what follows is an attempt at projecting how the league will look three years from now.
Included is a projected lineup and rotation/closer for all 30 teams, a reminder of where each team ranked in our latest farm system rankings and a look at notable upcoming free agents each team stands to lose between now and 2019.
Here's how the projected rosters were assembled:
- Players Under Contract: The obvious starting point was to pencil in the players who are under contract through the 2019 season.
- Arbitration-Eligible Players: Next up was players who will have not yet reached free agency when 2019 rolls around but have already established themselves as everyday big leaguers.
- Top Prospects: From there, the rest of the roster was filled in with top prospects in the farm system. These players are the toughest to project, as they have yet to prove anything at the big league level, but homegrown talent is often key to building a winner.
- Free Agents: Free agency obviously plays a major role in reshaping the MLB landscape, but for the sake of this exercise we made no assumptions as to where players would sign once they hit the open market.
- Financial Flexibility: While free-agent signing predictions were not made, a team's expected financial flexibility did factor into their spot in the rankings. The New York Yankees are the perfect example, as they will have boatloads of money to spend on the vaunted 2018-19 free-agent class. That had to be taken into account.
With all of that in mind, a combination of each team's projected roster, overall quality of young talent and financial freedom all factored into its final ranking.
So let's dive right into our future MLB power rankings with a look at where all 30 teams might stand three years from now.
- Login to post comments