MLB Pipeline released their top 20 list of Pittsburgh Pirates prospects today and Gregory Polanco heads the group. Almost every prospect ranking had Polanco ahead of Jameson Taillon, so this ranking is no surprise. The Pirates placed six players in MLB’s top 100 list and this latest ranking has them in the same order.
After Polanco and Taillon, Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, Alen Hanson and Josh Bell round out the top six. It was mentioned during the top 100 rankings that Reese McGuire and Nick Kingham just missed, so not surprisingly, they rank seven and eight respectively.
Harold Ramirez and Luis Heredia round out the top ten. While the order is different for most people, there seems to be a near consensus that these are the top ten prospects in the system.
The bottom ten have some rankings that you don’t see anywhere else, including Willy Garcia ranked 11th. Garcia has all the tools to be a great player, but his plate patience and strikeout rates are a big concern and could keep him from fully reaching his potential. He has the best outfield arm in the system, can play strong defense in right field and run, plus he has power potential and he is just 21 years old. The problem is he walked 23 times last year and had 154 strikeouts. Those numbers were both worse than his 2012 total at West Virginia(32/131 BB/K) in virtually the same amount of plate appearances. It’s tough to expect those numbers to get better as he moves up, but if he can put it together, he would be deserving of this 11th ranking by next year.
The 12th ranked player is Brandon Cumpton, which is also somewhat higher than most. Cumpton is more of a safe pick with a lower upside, while some of the players immediately after him have a bigger chance at not reaching their potential, but their potential is much higher.
The rest of the top 20 are common names in this range. Going from 13 to 20, they are Barrett Barnes, Tony Sanchez, Wyatt Mathisen, Clay Holmes, Stolmy Pimentel, JaCoby Jones, Jin-De Jhang and Cody Dickerson.
Our own top twenty rankings had Andrew Lambo, Joely Rodriguez and Blake Taylor in the 14-16 spots.
