MLB Pipeline released their list of the top 30 prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates today. We already knew their top five prospects in the system by looking at their top 100 prospects list released in late January. Tyler Glasnow was rated ninth on that list, then moved up a spot when Alex Reyes of the St Louis Cardinals went down with Tommy John surgery. Austin Meadows moved from tenth to ninth at that time, while Josh Bell, Mitch Keller and Kevin Newman are all among the top 60 prospects in the game.
After that top five, Pipeline then has Ke’Bryan Hayes, Cole Tucker, Will Craig, Nick Kingham and Steven Brault to round out their top ten prospects for the Pirates. As for the rest of the top 30, there are no real surprises in the group. They seem to be a little low on Clay Holmes with his 23rd place ranking, but he’s usually in the teens, so that’s not a drastic drop from average. No surprise names made or missed the top 30.
You can check the link at the top for scouting reports on each player and the full top 30.
Averaging Out The Top 10
Now that we have top 10 (or higher) prospect lists from numerous sources, we can take a look at the aggregate rankings from those lists. Using Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, John Sickels at Minor League Ball, Fangraphs and and today’s MLB Pipeline list, this is the overall top ten for the Pirates:
Farm System Ranking
This list from MLB Pipeline today also came with a farm system ranking. They have the Pirates as the seventh best system in baseball. Earlier this off-season, we also saw that the Pirates were rated as the fourth best system by Keith Law and seventh best by Baseball America. Over the weekend, John Sickels ranked them as the fifth best system, noting that the top five teams are all elite when it comes to talent. The other two sources used above for the aggregate top ten haven’t released their farm system rankings yet, but these four give you a pretty good idea that the Pirates are among the best in baseball.
In last year’s aggregate rankings, the Pirates were tied with the Milwaukee Brewers for the eighth best farm system. The average of these four lists has the Pirates as the sixth best farm system in baseball.
