On Thursday, MLB Pipeline named their top ten catching prospects and Reese McGuire ranked seventh. McGuire was also ranked seventh among catchers last year by MLB Pipeline. In the write-up of the top catchers by Jim Callis, he praises McGuire’s defense, calling his throwing, receiving and pitch framing, all above average. On offense, he uses the whole field and should develop gap power.
As one of the youngest players on Opening Day in the South Atlantic League, McGuire made the All-Star team and hit .262/.307/.334 in 98 games, while throwing out 39% of base runners attempting to steal.
On Tuesday, Tyler Glasnow was ranked as the third best right-handed pitching prospect and Jameson Taillon got an honorable mention. There weren’t any Pittsburgh Pirates listed among the top left-handed pitching prospects.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
I wonder if Bell and Meadows will make the top 10 outfielders. Guess we’ll find out. I think the MLB top 50 will be on tomorrow night at 9:00PM EST on MLB network.
Anyone else notice they have 2012 14th rounder Walker Buehler listed as the #4 prospect for this coming draft. In the old draft system, NH could have cut him a big check, but if we recall 2012 we had no real pool to work with since we couldn’t sign Appel. Would have been nice.
I doubt Buehler would’ve been around that long in the old system, but that still doesn’t mean the Pirates couldn’t have been the one to take him earlier.
I noticed Buehler on the top 50 draft prospect list too. Rail thin, Height: 6’1″, Weight: 160
There was still no real guarantee he would have signed with the Pirates under the old system too. Good for him. Now he will probably sign for 6+ million.
Hey move him up to 6th, because they have Schwarber on that list and he certainly wont be a C.
The last report I saw mentioned that Schwarber, though an excellent hitter, looked even worse in the outfield than he did as a catcher. Alfaro is another guy who is on shaky ground as a catching prospect.
He’s makin’ a list checkin’ it twice gonna find out which bucs will hit it just nice, pirates propects is comin’ to town!
Lets hope, other than Alvarez and Mercer, Neal does not have any draft picks of his own that have made it as starting position players or backups on this team, his drafts have not been good for position players to this point, could be because of the heavy concentration on pitchers.
And they have been good for pitchers?