For whatever it's worth, my impression was also always that he dinged the O's system for its lack of international talent, seemingly independent of the actual quality of the rest of the system. Like didn't he pretty much say exactly that when he had us in the bottom half a couple years ago when everyone else had us top 10?
ETA: well yes, actually it's in this very thread, from Feb. 2021
Keith Law: Also, the expectation that a team that has completely ignored international scouting – you know, where the best player in the NL came from, where the #1 and #3 prospects on my top 100 came from as well as the guys at 16 and 19 and 20 and 24 and 25 and 25 – for a decade, and that has zero international prospects of their own signing in their top 20, would have a top ten system is delusional
He absolutely used the lack of international talent as part of his justification. I do not think it's fair at all to say it was independent of the actual quality of the rest of the system. I know there are a lot of people who dislike Law and I know he has been too low on the O's farm the past few years, but he is not a dumb person, and he'd have to be in order to literally rank the system based on its actual quality but then to drop it down because of a lack of Latin American presence. That would indeed be delusional. I think it's pretty clear that he was simply saying that it's super difficult to get into the top 10 while ignoring a significant talent stream.
