John Sickels over at Minor League Ball, posted his list of the top 20 prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His list includes grades for each player and a description at the top for each grade. Tyler Glasnow is ranked as the #1 prospect and he grades as an A/A-, which ranks him as an elite prospect for Sickels (when two grades are listed, it basically means the player could go either grade). Glasnow was rated as an A last year, so in that sense, he dropped just slightly.
Sickels rounds out his top four with the same players as almost everyone else, though the order tends to differ. Austin Meadows ranks second, Mitch Keller third and Josh Bell is fourth. Kevin Newman ranks fifth, which seems to be a near consensus for everyone. After that, the lists tend to go in different directions.
Sickels rounds out his top ten with (in order) Ke’Bryan Hayes, Taylor Hearn, Nick Kingham, Steven Brault and Cole Tucker. Will Craig ranks 11th, then you have Yeudy Garcia and Travis MacGregor rounding out the top 13 spots.
I stopped at 13, because Sickels lists an extra nine players who could slot in 14-20 in his opinion due to having the same C+ grade as his 14-20 ranked prospects. That’s sort of the same tier system we use, where you’re rating players the same, then just sorting them out based on current preference. Basically, there isn’t a big difference in his mind between #14 (Alen Hanson) and the 29th ranked prospect in the system.
He also includes another 18 prospects in no particular order, who all received a C grade, so you have an idea of what his top 50 (technically 48) would look like if he went that far. The link at the top has all of the details, as well as brief descriptions on each of the top 20 prospects.
