Baseball America posted their top prospects by positions on Wednesday morning. The positions went 20 deep and included an overall strength grade for each spot, which you will find below.
Starting with catchers, Elias Diaz is rated as the eighth best prospect behind the plate. The position gets three stars out of a possible five. BA has Diaz ranked as the tenth best prospect for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
At first base, Josh Bell ranks second behind Cody Bellinger of the Los Angeles Dodgers. First base is a strong position at this time, receiving four stars.
The Pirates came up empty at second base. Alen Hanson is their best prospect at the spot, which also rates well with four stars.
Shortstop is the best position in baseball right now, at least for top-end prospects. Kevin Newman ranks seventh, while Cole Tucker is the 16th best at the spot. Ten shortstops made the top 100 for BA, with six of them ranking among the top 16 overall.
The Pirates have two third basemen in the top 20. Ke’Bryan Hayes ranks ninth, while Will Craig is the 17th best at his position. The position gets three stars, and five of them made BA’s top 100 list.
They haven’t posted outfielders or pitchers yet, but if you go by their top 100 list, Austin Meadows will rank second for outfielders, while Mitch Keller and Tyler Glasnow will be fourth and fifth respectively on the pitchers list. Assuming they split it up into right and left-handed, they would hold the same spots, as the three pitchers ahead of them are all right-handed. Steven Brault ranked seventh on BA’s top ten for Pirates, and only 12 left-handed pitchers made the top 100, so it’s possible Brault nabbed one of the bottom spots on that list.
I’ll update this once the others become available. They usually go deeper than 20 players with outfielders and pitchers, so there could be other Pirates listed.
UPDATE: In a group rated as one star out of five, Steven Brault ranked 24th for left-handed pitchers. Right-handed pitching, which only ranked as a two star group, went to 70 spots and didn’t have any additions from the Pirates. Not surprisingly, no Pirates made the corner outfield group.
