This is the third annual version of my ranking of all 30 MLB teams by their core of talent. The idea is to rank teams based on who they have under team control through the next two full seasons.
For this exercise, salaries don't matter and age isn't a factor -- but I'll round up on projecting young players (and vice versa against older players) since I'm projecting/ranking teams for a two-plus year period.
To make it easier to see which team has more talent when comparing them, I split players into three tiers: elite (5+ WAR talent, or MVP candidates), plus (3-5 WAR types) and solid (1.5-3 WAR, or lower-end starters and valuable role players). I opted to include players who have easy-to-hit vesting options or club/player options that are likely to be picked up, but I left out players with likely-to-be-exercised opt-outs. There's some subjectivity in this area; I call out any star players who don't qualify below.
Players are listed in order of my preference within each tier, so you can easily argue for a player who's on the top/bottom of a tier to move up or down. And the overall ranking isn't coming from an algorithm judging the teams or their numbers of players in each tier -- I'm still comparing each list one by one. It's often hard to compare the next 2.5 years of value of a prospect in Double-A versus a proven veteran having a down season.
