Baseball America released their top 100 prospects list on Wednesday afternoon and they have three Pittsburgh Pirates among the top 80 players.
Mitch Keller again ranks at the top prospect for the Pirates. He has dropped a little for BA though, going from 14th in their mid-season update, to 26th today. He was up to 11th at one point last year. Right-handed pitching is a position of strength in the minors right now and it shows by Keller’s ranking. He is the ninth best right-handed pitcher according to the list. MLB Pipeline had him fourth for his position.
Ke’Bryan Hayes cracked the top 50, ranking 49th overall. He is ranked fourth overall for third basemen, which is where MLB Pipeline had him yesterday. Hayes was not in the mid-season top 100 for BA.
Oneil Cruz is the third Pirate on the list, ranking 79th overall. That has him 11th overall for shortstops. BA seems to be on the same page as Pipeline with these last two rankings. Just this morning, Cruz received the honorable mention spot for the top ten shortstop prospects from Pipeline. In BA’s mid-season update, Cruz ranked 100th overall, one spot behind Calvin Mitchell.
The top 100 list for MLB Pipeline will be announced live on MLB Network on Saturday night. I plan to have a special live discussion thread that night, as the prospect list immediately follows shows covering the top ten left fielders and top ten center fielders (one hour each for all three shows). We will have more top 100 info later today. Once all of the top prospect sources release their top 100 lists, we will post a combined list to see the average rankings.
