MLB Pipeline posted their updated top 100 prospects list late Wednesday night and the Pittsburgh Pirates have six players in the new rankings. They also posted a weighted rankings of the top farm systems and the Pirates ranked number one on that list.
Tyler Glasnow continued to be the top prospect in the system, but there is a very small difference between the big righty and Austin Meadows at this point. Glasnow ranked tenth, while Meadows is just two spots lower. They have the same overall rating of 60 on the 20-80 scouting scale. That’s just one grade higher than the 55 that Josh Bell and Jameson Taillon received for the 29th and 30th spots respectively. Kevin Newman wasn’t on the preseason top 100, but he jumped all the way to the 53rd spot. Mitch Keller is the sixth Pirate on the list at 89th overall.
For the farm system rankings, they used just the top 100 as the measuring stick and gave points based on placement. If a player ranked #1 on their list, he was worth 100 points, the #2 guy was 99 points and it went down one point for every spot. For the 100th best player, he was worth one point. Because the Pirates had Glasnow, Meadows, Bell and Taillon all high up on the list, they rated well in the weighted rankings.
What that means though, is that once Taillon graduates from their list, the Pirates will no longer be considered the top farm system. They would drop down to fourth, assuming none of those three teams they skipped also had a player graduate. Taillon is at 40 innings now and their cutoff is 50 innings, so you would hope he drops off the list after two more starts. If he doesn’t, something went wrong in one of those games.
Pipeline also updated their top 30 Pirates prospects. It isn’t updated much from the preseason, though they did add draft picks. The interesting part is that Will Craig was the only draft pick to make the top 30. On our top 50 mid-season update, we had three of the high school pitchers in the top 30 portion of the list. It’s not a big difference though, since those three are ranked 26, 28 and 29 on our list and once you get to that area, you’re talking about a big tier of players with the same overall rating.
