MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 Pirates Prospects

On Thursday afternoon, MLB Pipeline released their list of the top 30 prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates. We already knew the top five were Mitch Keller, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Travis Swaggerty, Oneil Cruz and Cole Tucker, in that order. That’s because Pipeline had the first four in their top 100 and Tucker was listed as one of five players who just missed the list.

The rest of the top ten (in order) includes Kevin Kramer, Calvin Mitchell, Kevin Newman, Bryan Reynolds and Luis Escobar.

Their top 30 doesn’t include any real surprises, either with omissions or surprise players in the top 30. One player they included is Juan Pie  (ranked 28th), who spent the 2018 season in the DSL. He was the top signing during the 2017-18 international signing period for the Pirates at $500,000 until they signed Ji-Hwan Bae late for $1.25M (Bae is ranked 16th for Pipeline). We don’t rank players in our top 50 until they debut in the U.S., which Pie should do this summer, likely in the GCL.

We posted our own top 50 in our 2019 Prospect Guide, which will be fully updated soon to include every prospect in the system. Below you will find five other top ten lists from major sources, followed by an average ranking between all of them.

Here are the top ten prospects from Keith Law. You can read up on his full top 20 here.

1. Ke’Bryan Hayes
2. Mitch Keller
3. Travis Swaggerty
4. Oneil Cruz
5. Kevin Newman
6. Calvin Mitchell
7. Cole Tucker
8. Steven Jennings
9. Kevin Kramer
10. Lolo Sanchez

Here are the top ten prospects for Baseball America. You can read the full article here.

1. Mitch Keller
2. Ke’Bryan Hayes
3. Oneil Cruz
4. Travis Swaggerty
5. Kevin Kramer
6. Cole Tucker
7. Kevin Newman
8. Calvin Mitchell
9. Bryan Reynolds
10. Jason Martin

Here are the top ten prospects for Fangraphs. You can read the full article here.

1. Ke’Bryan Hayes
2. Mitch Keller
3. Travis Swaggerty
4. Oneil Cruz
5. Cole Tucker
6. Kevin Kramer
7. Luis Escobar
8. Calvin Mitchell
9. Bryan Reynolds
10. Pablo Reyes

Here are the top ten from Baseball Prospectus. Here’s the article.

1. Mitch Keller
2. Ke’Bryan Hayes
3. Travis Swaggerty
4. Oneil Cruz
5. Calvin Mitchell
6. Cole Tucker
7. Jason Martin
8. Kevin Kramer
9. Bryan Reynolds
10. Kevin Newman

Finally, here is the Pipeline top ten list:

1. Mitch Keller
2. Ke’Bryan Hayes
3. Travis Swaggerty
4. Oneil Cruz
5. Cole  Tucker
6. Kevin Kramer
7. Calvin Mitchell
8. Bryan Reynolds
9. Kevin Newman
10. Luis Escobar

Here is the top ten list when averaging out each of these five rankings:

1. Mitch Keller
2. Ke’Bryan Hayes
3. Travis Swaggerty
4. Oneil Cruz
5. Cole Tucker
6T. Kevin Kramer
6T. Calvin Mitchell
8. Kevin Newman
9. Bryan Reynolds
10T. Luis Escobar
10T. Jason Martin