MLB Pipeline and Baseball America each released their lists of the minor league teams with the most loaded rosters when it comes to prospects. Both sites included the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Pipeline has the Altoona Curve as the best team for prospects in the minors. Baseball America has ten teams listed with no particular order (I asked) to the teams, so Altoona being listed fifth doesn’t mean anything other than they made the list of ten loaded rosters. Pipeline has Nick Gonzales as the top prospect for the Pirates, and Quinn Priester as the top pitching prospect, so that helps explain their high ranking for the Curve. However, just those two alone probably wouldn’t be enough to get a team listed, as you can see by Indianapolis not making either list despite having Oneil Cruz and Roansy Contreras.
Altoona also has top 100 prospect Liover Peguero, as well as top 30 prospects for the Pirates (according to Pipeline) in Matt Fraizer, Michael Burrows, Carmen Mlodzinski, Kyle Nicolas, Jared Triolo, Tucupita Marcano, Tahnaj Thomas and Jack Suwinski. If you look at the bottom of the Pirates Prospects top 30 list, you’ll also find Luis Ortiz, JC Flowers and Connor Scott, as well as Carter Bins and Austin Roberts, who both made individual top 30 lists from our writers. That’s more than half of their roster getting some top 30 recognition in the system, plus their could be some sleepers in there, like Colin Selby, who had an impressive off-season with his training and was getting a lot of praise this spring.
BA didn’t quite go that deep with their mentions of the players on each team, but they have 14 Altoona players on their top 40 prospects list.
This just confirms that Altoona is loaded with talent this year and they could get stronger by mid-season depending on how long it takes first overall pick Henry Davis to join the team from Greensboro, where they have three catching prospects together.
