I'll back Briggs on his point, in guruspace and brewerfanspace the farm system was bleak, the sky was falling... during those years and yet there was some definite value there. Certainly it seems like more value then we had when I got into this prospect thing back in the late 90's. We're not saying it was enough to build a winner from scratch or anything, but that there was more value then you'd expect for ranking in the bottom 5 farm systems. Without getting bogged down in familiar arguments about the relative merits of various particular names. Went back and checked the top 10s. From 1999-2001 the major leaguers produced by the Brewers farm system top 10 were Ben Sheet, Ronnie Belliard, Valerio De Lo Santos, and some glorified September call-ups after that. Were it not for Sheets that would be crazy awful. Fun Fact in 9 major league season VLDS accumulated only 1.0 WAR, Belliard has 20.7, Sheets with 26.1. Those last 2 totals are pretty valuable players. But it really represents the flipside of the idea that currently we have a ton of depth, but missing some superstars. The farm system in those years could barely produce replacement level players to provide depth let alone real starters.