Instead of top prospects we have guys like Bregman, Correa, Tucker, Alvarez, Valdez, Javier, Taylor, and Peredes who are all under 27

I'll take that any day.

Agreed. It's a little bit reminiscent of our 1997-2005 run. We started with a fully stocked, highly rated farm. Then there was the big unit trade in 1998, then we called up our elite untouchable prospects (Elarton, Ward and Berkman), then we called up an influx of pitching prospects in 00-01 (Miller, Oswalt, Hernandez, Redding). After all those guys were in the show, our farm was basically dead last in baseball and we never replenished it. We could only patch work it so long before misery began in the late 00s.

I feel like our current cycle is running about 20 years ahead of that cycle. We sit here in 2021 with plenty of reason to believe we can contend in the foreseeable future but the farm needs to be restocked to ensure the run doesn't end in a full-on tear down. We also need some dry powder for future trades to supplement the big league club when we're in position to potentially win a world series. The good news is that our current regime seems to understand the importance of a well stocked farm much more than Drayton/Purpura and we're willing to invest in it.

I think Leon and either Nova/Pena should be top 100 prospects by the end of 2021. And even after we leaned on rookies like Taylor, Paredes, Javier, Urquidy, etc last year, we still have a nice influx of pitching prospects yet to be deployed like Whitley, Solomon, Solis, and even Abreu. Despite not having any current top 100 prospects, I think we're still in decent position. We just need our restocking initiative over the next couple years to go smoothly.

Or we get the Correa & McCullers deal done in spring training. Then go on to win back to back to back WS titles.