Scouting isn't guesswork. Some organizations have built genuine, repeatable infrastructure for identifying amateur talent. Others haven't. And while the pick number tells you almost nothing, the room making the pick tells you a lot.
So ahead of the 2026 MLB Draft, we set out to answer a simple question: Which front offices consistently produce quality prospect pipelines? To find out, we analyzed seven years of FanGraphs prospect data and created the Draft Trust Score, a 0-100 rating designed to identify the organizations that consistently draft well.
MLB's Draft Trust Score
To build the Draft Trust Score, we tracked every prospect on FanGraphs' annual prospect board across nine snapshots from 2019 through mid-2026. Every organization was ranked along with every Future Value (FV) grade. Each organization's score is based on three factors:
- Sustained pipeline depth: How many FV 50+ prospects per year, every year
- Current strength: Average prospect quality from 2024-26
- Peak impact talent: FV 55+ prospects, the threshold where players project as legitimate MLB contributors, rather than depth arms.
Those three metrics are weighted into a 0-100 score:
- 40%Â sustained pipeline depth: The heaviest weight goes to sustained FV 50+ count across all nine snapshots, measuring pipeline production over time. A team that loads up one year and disappears the next gets punished here.
- 35%Â current pipeline strength. Using the late-window FV average from 2024-26. Past production that already graduated to the majors doesn't help you Saturday.
- 25%Â impact talent
Team | Draft Trust Score (0-100) |
|---|---|
Mariners | 81.5 |
Rays | 80.0 |
White Sox* | 76.2 |
Giants | 75.9 |
Mets | 74.9 |
Brewers | 70.6 |
Nationals | 69.8 |
MLB's elite drafting organizations
Seattle Mariners
- Draft trust score: 81.5
Nobody in baseball drafts more reliably than Seattle right now. The Mariners have 18 FV 50+ prospects across seven snapshots, four FV 55+ appearances, and a late-window average that leads this group. The Mariners are not a flashy organization, and you won't find them leading any single season's FV55+ count, but year after year they keep stocking the board.
Logan Gilbert (14th pick, 2018). Cal Raleigh (90th pick, same class), George Kirby (20th overall, 2019), Bryan Woo (6th round, 2021) and Bryce Miller (4th round, same year). Kade Anderson (3rd overall, 2025) is currently posting a 1.02 ERA in Double-A with a 90-to-8 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 61 innings.
They have five prospects in the current FanGraphs Top 100, anchored by Colt Emerson at 55 FV, already in the major leagues at 20 years old. The pipeline trend shows a slight decline from their early-window peak, which is natural when the best players graduate, but the refilling mechanism is intact.
Tampa Bay Rays
- Draft trust score: 80.0
The Rays have 21 FV 50+ appearances, and seven FV 55+ appearances, tied for the most in baseball. Tampa Bay pulled Shane McClanahan, Taj Bradley and Joe Ryan from the 2018 draft alone, three legitimate MLB contributors from a single class. They have maintained Top 100 board presence across eight of nine tracked snapshots.
The current pipeline is replenishing after the graduation wave with Carson Williams, Xavier Isaac and Theo Gillen all developing. The one blot on the record is the Ryan-for-Nelson Cruz swap in 2021, a rental that cost them a legitimate rotation piece. The organizational machinery that found Ryan in the 7th round in the first place has not broken, though. The Rays remain the model for how to operate without financial resources that match the top of the market.
Chicago White Sox
- Draft trust score: 76.2
This one requires context. The White Sox led all of baseball in 2019 with three FV 55+ prospects in a single snapshot: Eloy Jimenez, Nick Madrigal and Luis Robert. That was the peak of a rebuild that briefly looked like one of the game's best pipelines. Then the competitive window opened, the veterans underperformed, and the organization cratered.
The pipeline score reflects both realities: Excellent historical production, but the worst trajectory among the elite tier, declining by 3.68 average FV points from the early window to the late window. They are an elite pipeline on historical terms that has not yet demonstrated it can refill. Garrett Crochet (2020) still earns the room credit, as does the emerging group around Noah Schultz. But the White Sox are elite by past record, not current momentum.
San Francisco Giants
- Draft trust score: 75.9
Twenty-one FV 50+ appearances is the most in baseball alongside Tampa Bay. Eight FV 55+ appearances is the most of any organization. The Giants have been on this list every single year since 2019. The issue is conversion: Their top-end talent has not translated cleanly to major league production. Joey Bart was supposed to be a franchise catcher. He wasn't. Marco Luciano spent years as a Top 100 fixture and has not stuck. The current pipeline leads with Bryce Eldridge (55 FV, already in the majors at 21) and a cluster of younger international players. The organizational infrastructure to identify talent is clearly working. The development side has questions.
New York Mets
- Draft trust score: 74.9
Twenty FV 50+ prospects, six FV 55+ appearances. The Mets draft well and just don't always keep what they find. Pete Crow-Armstrong (2020, 1st round) became an MVP candidate after being traded to the Cubs. Francisco Alvarez arrived as a 60 FV catcher with no obvious weakness. The current board shows no FanGraphs Top 100 prospects in the 2026 snapshot because the top of the pipeline graduated. That's a good problem to have. The draft room earns its score.
Milwaukee Brewers
- Draft trust score: 70.6
The most interesting entry in the elite tier. The Brewers show zero FV 55+ appearances before 2023 and barely registered on the board in the early window. Since 2022 though, they are the fastest-rising pipeline in baseball, posting a +1.16 delta from early to late window, second only to the Athletics' relocation bump.
Jackson Chourio debuted at 17, hit as an 18-year-old, graded as a 60 FV at 19, and now sits at 65 FV as a 20-year-old who looks like a perennial All-Star. Jesus Made entered the 2025 snapshot at 35+ FV. By the end of that year he was at 60. Right now he is a 65 FV prospect at 19 years old in Double-A, the second-best prospect in baseball. Two prospects in the Top 100 in 2026. The Brewers' current prospect capital score ranks second in baseball behind only Pittsburgh. Whatever they started doing differently, it is working.
Washington Nationals
- Draft trust score: 69.8
The anomaly of this dataset. The Nationals score 69.8 composite and sit firmly in Elite territory, but their early-window numbers are inflated by a large 2019-2020 presence built around players who never fully delivered. They have posted meaningful board numbers consistently, but the trajectory is the worst in baseball at -7.71 from early to late window, the largest collapse in the study. The Nationals produced paper pipeline that didn't convert. Eli Willits (#1 overall, 2025) is the current headliner at A+ as an 18-year-old. The score says they know how to find talent. The conversion rate says the back end of the organization has not finished the job.
Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres
These teams all score in the 65-68 range, elite by the composite, with individual strengths worth noting but not the central story of this piece.
Teams on the verge of joining the elite
Pittsburgh Pirates
- Draft trust score: 64.9
One point from elite, and the trajectory is what matters most here. Pittsburgh has the highest current prospect capital score in baseball. Konnor Griffin is the only player in the entire FanGraphs database grading at 70 FV. He debuted at 19 and his FV moved from 50 to 70 in a single calendar year. Paul Skenes is no longer in the prospect database because he graduated to become the best pitcher in baseball at 23. The Pirates' composite score is depressed by weak early-window numbers from years when the organization was genuinely bad at this. The current room is not the same room. They have earned the benefit of the doubt heading into Saturday.
Cleveland Guardians
- Draft trust score: 49.7
Nineteen FV 50+ appearances across the whole window, more than the Dodgers or Yankees. Zero FV 55+ in any snapshot. That tells you exactly what Cleveland does: they produce a steady volume of solid prospects who grade out as 50 FV role players, but they have not reliably developed the impact tier. Steven Kwan was a 5th-round pick who became an All-Star, but he never graded as a 55+ FV prospect before reaching the majors. The scouts at FanGraphs were as surprised as everyone else. The current board shows Travis Bazzana at 50 FV, Angel Genao at 50, Ralphy Velazquez at 50. Depth, not stars. The 2019 prep gamble, where four of their top six picks were high schoolers and none reached the majors, depressed the score significantly. The lesson cost them years.
Texas Rangers
- Draft trust score: 51.3
The Rangers are a rising pipeline (+0.75 delta), which matters headed into this draft. Wyatt Langford debuted as a 55 FV prospect, hit immediately, and is now a 65 FV player in his second full season. Evan Carter has legitimate star potential. The early window was rough, as the 2018 class produced five MLB players at a combined -1.5 WAR, but the current draft room appears to have corrected. Worth watching Saturday.
Organizations still searching for a winning draft formula
Kansas City Royals
- Draft trust score: 13.1
The Royals have failed to produce meaningful pipeline depth at any point in this window. They drafted Bobby Witt Jr., the best player in the American League, and produced almost nothing else that registered on the board.
Los Angeles Angels
- Draft trust score: 8.9
The Angels have had consistent first-round picks and converted almost none of them.
Houston Astros
- Draft trust score: 5.9 (POOR)
The number is what it is. Three FV 50+ appearances across the entire window. No FV 55+ in any snapshot since 2022. Zero Top 100 prospects in the current 2026 board. The Astros lost their first and second-round picks in 2021 as sign-stealing punishment, which compressed the pipeline severely. But even before and after that hole, the board presence has been minimal. Jeremy Peña (3rd round, 2018) and Hunter Brown (5th round, 2019) earned the room extraordinary real-world credit, but they never showed up on FanGraphs' pre-MLB board as impact prospects. That means either the evaluators whiffed on grading them or the Astros are developing players in ways that don't map onto traditional prospect metrics. Either way, the board data says the current pipeline is thin. Houston is the one organization where the real-world results, in WAR production and draft efficiency, tell a meaningfully different story than the prospect metrics do.
Philadelphia Phillies
- Draft trust score: 0.0
One FV 50+ prospect across the entire nine-snapshot window. The Phillies have been competitive at the major league level through trades and free agency while fielding one of the emptiest farm systems in baseball every single year of this study. That strategy works until it doesn't.
What this means for the 2026 MLB Draft
So if numbers don't lie, there are three things the numbers say clearly. First, current pipeline state matters more than recent history. The late-window average (2024-2026) was weighted at 35 percent for a reason. Organizations that were excellent five years ago and are rebuilding right now, like the White Sox and the Braves, earn less trust on draft weekend than organizations that are actively rising. Milwaukee and Detroit are the two organizations where the data says the draft room is working better now than it has in years.
Second, FV 55+ is the separator. Eighteen organizations have fewer than five FV 55+ appearances across seven years. That is the threshold where prospects project as genuine contributors rather than organizational depth. The teams that have consistently cleared it — Tampa Bay, San Francisco, Pittsburgh of late, and Cincinnati — are doing something the others aren't. They are not just finding volume, they are also finding players who can carry weight.
Third, the Brewers are the story heading into this draft. Milwaukee's pipeline trajectory is the steepest rise in baseball over this window. They have the second-highest current prospect capital behind Pittsburgh. Jesus Made's FV moved from 35+ to 65 in less than a calendar year. Jackson Chourio is a 65 FV player at 20 years old. If you want to know which organization's picks are worth paying attention to Saturday, watch the Milwaukee table.
Pipeline data sourced from FanGraphs prospect board annual snapshots, 2019 through July 2026. Composite score methodology: 40% sustained FV 50+ count, 35% late-window (2024-2026) FV average, 25% FV 55+ impact appearances, each normalized to a 0-100 scale. Career WAR and draft pick data via Baseball Reference and Bleacher Report.
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