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Keith Law released his organizational rankings today, and they're exactly what you'd expect: dead last. We're hardcore Angels fans, so we're already pretty tuned in to just how out of shape and depressing the farm system is right now, especially after trading away Sean Newcomb and Chris Ellis this winter. We have nobody, guys, and while every other baseball site had us pegged as the worst in MLB already, Keith Law kicked the bummer levels up a half dozen notches or so:
I've been doing these rankings for eight years now, and this is by far the worst system I've ever seen. They traded their top two prospects in the Andrelton Simmons deal and had no one remotely close to top-100 status. They need a big draft this year to start to restock the system or we're going to start talking about whether it's time to trade Mike Trout.
So, it's literally the worst that Law has seen in his eight years of doing these rankings, and that still seems like it's putting it lightly. Oh well, as I said before, you knew this already. I knew this already. We ALL knew this already. But i'll be damned if it doesn't sting a bit seeing it blurted out there for the rest of the world to know, like the frenemy you had in high school who points out your gigantic zit during lunch break, while all your close friends had the decency to just pretend like they didn't see it.
The interesting thing that popped out the most, though, is Keith Law being one of the first non-Halos Heaven writers to throw out the idea of trading Mike Trout in order to build for long term success in the future. It was something that got shot down(for the most part) when it was posted here months ago, but now? The tide could continue to slowly turn towards that make or break point for the Angels: lose with Mike Trout, or win without him. Things are probably not THAT dire...yet. But considering the Angels had a top 5 system as recent as 2011, and it's only gone downhill in rankings since then, the trend is headed towards the toilet. It'll take more than just a savvy draft to get this out of the gutter; it'll take a miracle or two via trade on top of mistake-free drafts and even then we're just talking about getting out of the lower 20s.
These are indeed the times that try Angels fans' souls.