On Tuesday morning, Baseball America posted their updated top ten prospects list for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Mitch Keller remained in the top spot, but they had some changes with the rest of the list.
The mid-season BA list had shortstop Oneil Cruz in the second spot. In the update today, he dropped down to the third slot, switching places with third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes on the list.
The mid-season update still had Shane Baz, who placed fourth before he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays. First round pick Travis Swaggerty was one spot below Baz then and he now moves up to fill that vacant fourth spot.
The next two players also moved up the list. Kevin Kramer goes from eighth at the mid-season point to fifth, while Cole Tucker moves up four spots to sixth overall.
Kevin Newman remains at seventh, Calvin Mitchell picked up one spot to get to eighth, and Bryan Reynolds saw the biggest drop, going from sixth to ninth. He had a tough AFL season, both at the plate and in the field, though it should be noted that he played well at Altoona to finish the season.
The final spot on the updated top ten list went to Jason Martin.
What is interesting to note about that group of players is that it is led by a pitcher, but the next nine spots are all position players. You also have seven players who should be in either Triple-A or the majors to open the 2019 season, so it’s both position heavy and upper level heavy. BA has reports on all of the players in the link at the top.
