Baseball America wrapped up their position-by-position prospect rankings on Friday afternoon, posting the top corner outfielders. They have three Pittsburgh Pirates on their list, ranking Austin Meadows second overall, followed by Harold Ramirez at #12 and Willy Garcia is the 37th best.
While Austin Meadows has played center field his entire career, BA sees him as a future corner outfielder. That seems a little pessimistic on their part, as Meadows has the range and ability to play center field at a high level. Either way, he would have still ranked high if they put him on the center field list instead. The Pirates ended up with no one on that list, though all three players on today’s list have played center field. BA ranked Meadows as the 22nd best prospect on their top 100 list, and the fifth best outfielder. They praised Meadows by saying that he has the lowest risk among players on their corner outfield list due to his strong bat and defensive skills.
Ramirez was rated 95th by BA on their top 100 list, which is about the same area as everyone else had him. He just missed a couple lists and got ranked as high as 80th overall by one source.
Ramirez was the last of 12 corners outfielders who made the BA top 100 list, but they felt the depth at the two corner outfield positions warranted 45 spots on their list today. While the 37th spot means Willy Garcia was well outside their top 100 list(he didn’t get a single top 150 vote from any of their six writers), he is still considered a viable prospect. BA is actually higher on him than anyone else, ranking Garcia 12th in the Pirates’ system.
Earlier this week, we posted about BA’s lists for first basemen, second basemen and shortstops, following that up with their article on third basemen, which included two Pirates.
The complete list of position rankings from BA can be found below, with 13 Pirates making their lists:
Catchers: Reese McGuire #7, Elias Diaz #9
Right-Handed Pitchers: Tyler Glasnow #3, Jameson Taillon #30
First Base: Josh Bell #2
Second Base: Alen Hanson #5
Shortstop: Cole Tucker #21, Kevin Newman #22
Third Base: Ke’Bryan Hayes #5, Jordan Luplow #20
Corner Outfielders: Austin Meadows #2, Harold Ramirez #12, Willy Garcia #37
For comparison sake, you can see the position rankings from Keith Law here, which also has a brief rundown of the first three lists from BA at the bottom. This article on MLB Pipeline’s top outfielders, has links to the previous rankings from them. Meadows is listed as their fourth best outfield prospect.
