Hello and welcome back to your assigned reading material, where we will look at earnings forecasts for the Evaderstalk about farm system rankings, read the ongoing stream of prospect reports and more.
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Dodger Insider: Dodgers recently announced their 2026 minor league managers and coaching staff, which appears to have a surprising amount of continuity aside Fumi Ishibashi is promoted.
The Dodgers farm system returns six of its seven managers from last season, with Ishibashi taking over the reins of the Arizona Complex League Dodgers. Ishibashi has been with the Dodger organization since 2008, appearing in three games in his Minor League career and serving as a bullpen catcher for the Inland Empire 66ers. He joined the coaching ranks full-time with the AZL Dodgers in 2011 and served as the Dodgers’ bullpen catcher from May 2012 through the 2013 season. He has coached several positions in the organization, and this will be his second stint as a minor league manager as he was DSL 2 Manager in 2019, going 35-34 and finishing in third place in DSL.
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FanGraph: It’s time for projection systems to spit out their preseason wisdom, and their Depth Charts have the Dodgers at a whopping 99.5 wins. That’s good for a 99.1% chance of making the playoffs, 94.1% of winning the NL West and 27.5% of winning three times in the World Series.
FanGraph: Meanwhile, ZiPS has the Dodgers pegged at a still elite, but more modest 96 wins, which comes with a 91.7% chance of reaching the playoffs, a 68.9% chance of winning the division, and an 18.2% chance of winning the World Series. I’m going with the more optimistic option for the sake of my sanity (and social media interactions).
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The The latest Dodgers Roundup revolved around the publication of Top 100 listsand this one has a number of farm system rankings, where the Dodgers predictably also excel… especially.
ESPN: The Dodgers’ minor league cohort checks in at #4 here, projecting $308 million in value.
For Dodgers haters, this is cold comfort. They are no longer the No. 1 farm system in the sport, but they are tied for first with the Rays in “quality depth,” which is just the total number of prospects they have rated above 40 FV. The idea is that literally every farm in baseball history has some forty FV prospects (roughly a third- to fifth-round talent) so they can be considered “commons” in baseball card jargon. So any prospect above that level is the kind of prospect that not every team has more than a few in the system; some have only five or six this year.
The Dodgers have eighteen such prospects, one more than the Brewers. I suspect four or five of those 18 will play in the major leagues this season, and I don’t think any of those players are future stars. So this could be a light year for the Dodgers introducing impact rookies, but that should start again in 2027. I think the big league team should do just fine in 2026 without the extra help.
The Athletics: Here they come in at number 2 and belong to the Tier 1 of systems.
The Dodgers are the epitome of hitter development, with a clear idea of who they think they can help and processes in place to ensure that happens once they acquire the player, whether through the draft, a trade or an international signing. Kendal George isn’t a top 100 prospect, but they took George, an 80 runner (on the scouting scale of 20-80) with a terrible swing and no power, and tweaked the swing to the point where he’s now a viable prospect – maybe a Chandler Simpson type (it’s the obvious comparison), maybe even a little better. This seemed like an unlikely proposition a year ago, but the Dodgers are the best at what they do. Fans of other teams can complain all day about the money the team spends on its Major League roster, but the Dodgers back that up with old-fashioned things that you have to respect even if you don’t like them: They scout intensively and do individual development work with their players — especially hitters — that’s the best thing in sports.
CBS Sports: Do you want number 1? You get number 1.
Because the Dodgers had to be the best at something else, right? Realistically, they have perhaps the most impressive player development machine in the history of the sport. They never make “sell” trades or pick high in the draft – their luxury tax status often means their first pick is 10 spots lower than it would otherwise be – and yet they still prove to be reliably good players. Executives from other teams have pointed to the size of the Dodgers’ workforce and their ability to individualize development plans for each player (rather than relying on a one-for-all approach) as keys to their success in this area. Regardless, their current crop includes both high-end outfielders José de Paula, Eduardo QuinteroAnd Zyhir Hope) and an impressive amount of depth. There’s no reason to believe they’ll leave.
Baseball prospectus: Last but certainly not least, they also have the Dodgers at #1.
It seems unfair to have the best system in baseball when you have two World Series titles – not to mention more than a decade of regular season success and high spending that always means picking very late in the draft. And if you’re the kind of person whose knees tremble every time you see a prospect’s z-contact drop below 83% in the minors, then this isn’t the system for you. But pretty much every prospect here is hitting the ball really hard, and enough of them will keep doing it that the decade-plus of success might just stretch in half.
In almost all of these cases, it is the depth of the system that is most striking. The assumption is essentially that the Dodgers have assembled so many talented prospects that there’s a good chance some of them will at least be quality regulars or more, even if they’re not elite. Should make for interesting internal evaluations, and thus trading decisions.
Baseball America: Of course, having a lot of depth can also be seen as a negative, and the Dodgers are ranked No. 13 here. It’s an outlier among their peers, but also historically for Baseball America, as it’s the the first time since 2014 that the Dodgers have disappeared from their Top 10.
The front end of the Dodgers system is led by a quartet of outfielders with high upside and contrasting skill sets. From there, many of the group’s more intriguing players faced injuries in 2025. The system’s pitching talent could also use a boost.
In short, they seem to feel that many of their best hitters are unproven or flawed, that the pitching in the system has fallen away, and that injuries have stagnated a number of other potentially impactful prospects.
Honestly? I see it. 2026 is going to be a big year for a lot of guys in the system.
The Athletics: Back to the individual prospect rankings, here are the Top 20 prospects in the Dodgers system, including seven other notable prospects. Beyond the general optimism about the system, the order itself is relatively similar to consensus. Also, Maddux Bruns is listed as a fallen prospect, while Charles Davalan And Christian Zazueta are called as sleepers.
ESPN: Meanwhile, their Top 10 includes the Dodgers Zach Ehrhard at number 7, which is striking.
Baseball prospectus: Back to Top 100 Top 101 lists, the Dodgers land five: De Paula at #14, Hope at #18, Quintero at #27, Mike Sirota at #34, and Emil Morales at #56. They’re all somewhat conspicuously high up there.
Baseball prospectus: Within their next 10 ranked prospects was Alex Vrijlandwho missed it due to a low ceiling and looked mostly lost during his call.
Baseball prospectus: Who could be in their Top 101 next year? Davalan gets another mention, notable for being an outlier in the system.
Davalan is a bit of an outlier within the group. He was an elite contact hitter in college and continued to get plenty of wood on the ball during his brief Cal League stint. His swing decisions are very passive – which the Dodgers usually don’t mind – but he doesn’t chase and has at least average power potential. If he can swing a little less defensively with two strikes, and with more intent overall, Davalan could quickly look like a poor man. Kevin McGonigle at a corner outfield position, which is something like the 85th best prospect in baseball.
MLB Pipeline: A few international Dodgers sign up Ricardo Trekt And Tom Apfebaum were named among the most interesting of the class of 2026.
The age-old saying goes, “If you can play, scouts will find you.” But… Russia? Pulles, who represented Spain at the 2024 U18 European Championship, was born to a Russian mother and Cuban father in Moscow and has developed into a switch-hitting catcher with some pop from the left side of the dish. Only five Russian-born players have ever made it to the Major Leagues, though none grew up in the country. Lyle Miller-Greenwho was, and has been, born in Tomsk, Russia also called the ‘Siberian Sultan of Swat’, is currently in the White Sox system and reached High-A this past year.
Only 22 residents of Germany have climbed a Major League hill (who could forget that? Pretzels Get Seenthe nation’s winningest pitcher), and while the line of development will be long, Apfelbaum has a strong foundation to work with. At 6 feet tall, he can crank up his heat to the mid-nineties. Working with a light crossfire release and a lower three-quarter arm slot, he can sell his change well out of his hand. His father, Georg, is the former chairman of the European Baseball Coaches Association, and Tom has long been a standout on the international baseball scene, most recently representing the country at the U18 World Championship in Japan in September.
Yes, their background immediately struck me as well. The Dodgers are scouting seemingly everywhere.
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The catalyst. https://t.co/60H1IQD27z
— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) February 4, 2026
Let’s go.
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