Andy McKay had this quote: "Our players and coaches in our program are highly coveted by other organizations. We are producing players other teams want. I look at that as a measure of our organization."
The players that were "highly coveted" were not drafted by you, Andy. All those prior drafts are gone now, so what you have left is - well, very little, according to people whose job it is to look at all 30 teams and assess them against one another (Andy literally says he has no idea what's going on in other orgs or what they have to offer). So yes, prior farm pieces got turned into Segura and Haniger. One of those is still cheap. Meanwhile, a lot of other pieces Dipoto moved for random relievers and such show up on other Top-20s around the league. Gohara is #2 in a stacked Braves system according to John Sickels, who calls him "the Brazillian CC Sabathia". I went with a lefty Carlos Zambrano, but let's not quibble especially since they got him for nothing. Tyler O'Neill is an MLB top-100 prospect as well for the Cardinals. Zack Littell is 8th for the Twins. Neidert is 10th for the Marlins (he was #3 for Seattle in John's 2017 rankings). Alex Jackson and Thomas Burrows would both still be high on Seattle's list if here.
Meanwhile, the Mariners can't even get past 8 identifiable prospects for Sickel, with two players (Carlson and Julio Rodriguez) who have practically zero exposure to pro ball. The Ms have one blue-chip, top-100 prospect bat in Kyle Lewis, whose previously-demolished knee still concerns me despite my love for his game. Evan White and Sam Carlson are years and years away. Max Povse has bounced between the pen and the rotation which is not how a normal org treats a "top" prospect. Vogelbach is so well-liked that the Ms have added a bunch of players at his position to make sure he is not relied upon in any way. Braden Bishop, a 4th OF type who might squeeze some rotation years out due to grit and grind, is Seattle's 4th-best offering currently, and Joe Rizzo is a short-but-nice young bat without a locked-down position. The rest is slop.
McKay was talking up players like Art Warren, a mid-to-high 90s relief arm, like it's some amazing thing to have a guy with delivery issues who throws hard from the pen in a farm system these days. You better have that, Adam - it's about all that's left. Eric Filia was showcased as an older prospect who swings an interesting-yet-powerless bat from a corner and just got a 50-game suspension for what I assume is weed.
This doesn't mean the farm is bankrupt. If some other team has 30 lottery chances and you have 3, but all three pan out you look just fine. If Lewis turns into Andre Dawson and Evan White is Mark Grace, the Ms are in business. But Dipoto keeps talking up innings and at-bats like throwing young players of middling talent in the fire is a genius move on his part. It's not like Seattle deployed a 19 year old A-Rod or Griffey last year. There was no Felix getting on the mound to take his early lumps.
The Ms lopped the head off the farm in order to add depth around their mainstays. They can't then claim system health based on what they have already moved out. It has to be based on what's left, and right now there's not a lot left.
It's hard to judge the lesser-known prospects in systems. The Ms had a nice-looking system in 2005 in retrospect, when it seemed to be a one-man squad at first blush. Seattle had Felix at the top of Sickels's rankings obviously, but here's who followed: Shin-soo Choo (#3), Yuniesky Betancourt (#4), Wladimir Balentien (#11), Adam Jones (#12), Michael Morse (#13), Asdrubal Cabrera (#16). If Snelling and Nageotte had stayed healthy, who knows?
Of course, Seattle traded Choo, Betancourt, Jones, Morse and As-Cab, and shuffled Betancourt overseas where he demolished pitching in the second-best league in the world. I wouldn't be surprised to see several names from Dipoto's cast-offs coming around to haunt us in similar ways.
10 years from now when we write about the Dipoto years, will it be after watching Gohara win a Cy Young and O'Neill club a 40-homer season, or will he have used that capital to instead get something useful done for Seattle? He says now is the time to rebuild the farm, but it only needs rebuilding because of his own actions. Gohara, O'Neill and Lewis would have been three top-100 players for Seattle's system, with Neidert and Littell wrestling with Carlson for props behind that lead squad.
So I hope for good things for Lewis, White and Carlson, and for more bull-penners to emerge from the system. But the Ms aren't even trying for starting arms on the farm, so if you want a major contributor to graduate from the farm you're only looking a couple of guys. Dipoto's next job is to restock, but with his laser-focus on the big-league club and the immediate future it's hard to see him selling on anyone, which means all Seattle can do is draft or swap deck chairs. Dipoto will definitely swap deck chairs.
Unfortunately deck chairs don't help Seattle make the playoffs in the Felix Era. Here's hoping Dipoto leaves something on the farm for the next guy, or at least out-does Pat Gillick with the big league club, cuz right now he's showing Gillick tendencies with Bavasi success rates.