John Sickels posted his list of the top 175 prospects earlier this week and gave one Pirates’ prospect the highest ranking he has ever received. Sickels has Tyler Glasnow as the second best prospect in baseball, trailing only Corey Seager of the Dodgers. Glasnow’s previous highest ranking was sixth overall from Keith Law. Three other Pirates made the top 100, starting with Austin Meadows(30), followed by Josh Bell(70) and Jameson Taillon(86). One other Pirate made the top 175 and it was an interesting choice considering what we already saw this month from Sickels.
Three weeks ago, Sickels posted his list of the top 20 prospects for the Pirates and had Harold Ramirez ranked fifth in the system, followed by Ke’Bryan Hayes. So it’s interesting to note that Ramirez didn’t make his top 175, but Hayes was ranked #144 on the list. If anything since the top 20 list went up, you would think Ramirez would have moved up(I don’t condone prospect movement in such a short time barring major injury) because he tore up Spring Training pitching during that time and there hasn’t been any news on Hayes. So I’d chalk it up as an oversight near the bottom of a long list. It may have also been a change in thought since his Pirates’ list was published.
Besides Ramirez, there are a lot of Pirates who received consideration for the back-end of the list according to Sickels. In alphabetical order, they are: Steven Brault, Yeudy Garcia, Alen Hanson, Nick Kingham, Kevin Kramer, Reese McGuire, Kevin Newman, Stephen Tarpley and Cole Tucker.
