Baseball America released their position-by-position rankings of minor league prospects and thirteen Pittsburgh Pirates players made the cut. Right-handed pitchers and outfielders, as well as catchers, are all spots that are well-represented with Pirates prospects.
Jameson Taillon was tops among Pirates right-handed pitchers, coming in at tenth place. Showing how deep the minors are in RHP, Tyler Glasnow was ranked 20th overall. Nick Kingham was ranked 27th. This list was by far the biggest, going down to 65 spots, allowing Luis Heredia to make the list as the 56th best righty.
For catchers, Reese McGuire was ranked as the seventh best prospect, while Tony Sanchez was 13th and Wyatt Mathisen came in at 24th place. Jin-De Jhang doesn’t rank far behind Mathisen(one spot on our list), but he wasn’t listed in the top twenty-five.
The outfielders were split up into corner outfielders and center fielders. On the center field list, Gregory Polanco ranked second behind Byron Buxton, the top prospect in baseball. Austin Meadows came in at eighth and Barrett Barnes barely made the list, grabbing the 30th and final spot.
As for corner outfielders, Josh Bell and Harold Ramirez finished #11 and #12 respectively. This list went to 40 spots and no other Pirates were on it.
For shortstops, Alen Hanson was the eight best overall and only Pirates player on the list.
The Pirates failed to place any in the top relievers list, which only went to ten. They also didn’t have any top left-handed pitchers, a list which went to thirty spots. Our top twenty prospect list has Joely Rodriguez, Blake Taylor and Cody Dickson in the 15-17 spots, so it isn’t a completely bare position in the system.
There was also no one at third base, first base or second base, obvious areas of weakness in another otherwise deep system.
