One day after Keith Law at The Athletic ranked the Pittsburgh Pirates as the sixth best farm system, Kiley McDaniel from ESPN has the Pirates ranked as the ninth best system.
McDaniel uses a system where the players are given a value, then you add up that value to get a value for the entire system. That system put the Pirates just behind the eighth place team (Texas Rangers), but well behind the seventh place Tampa Bay Rays.
The Pirates had three top 100 prospects for McDaniel, and three others who received honorable mention.
Yesterday’s list had the Pirates third in the National League behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers. That placed them first among NL Central clubs. Today’s list has the Diamondbacks and Dodgers ahead of the Pirates, but the Cincinnati Reds are fifth on the list, placing the Pirates second in the division and fourth in the league.
The rest of the NL Central ranks tenth (St Louis Cardinals), 11th (Chicago Cubs) and 15th (Milwaukee Brewers). Both lists released so far for farm system rankings have all five NL Central teams in the top half of MLB.
When we get more of these lists, we can look at an average ranking for the Pirates vs the division/league.
