Every year we post about five top 100 prospects lists. The fifth one came out on Wednesday morning from Fangraphs. The Pittsburgh Pirates have had between 3-5 prospects in each of the previously released lists. They have five again today, including a player making his first appearance on a top 100 list. At the bottom of this article, I did an average ranking for the top four prospects.
Fangraphs has third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes as the top prospect for the Pirates. He’s ranked 20th overall on their list today. This is the second time that he has been ranked as the top prospect in the system and it’s his second highest ranking behind the 18th overall given to him by Keith Law two weeks ago.
Mitch Keller receives his least favorable rating on this list. He is ranked 37th overall. His previous low was 26th overall by Baseball America. Everyone else had him in the 18-26 range.
Travis Swaggerty is ranked 56th today, his second best ranking. He ended up making four of the five top 100 lists. He’s the third best prospect for the Pirates on four of those lists, but missed the BA list (more on this in the average rankings below).
Oneil Cruz is ranked 62nd today, which is his highest ranking on any of the five lists we use. His previous best was 78th overall by Keith Law. Cruz made all five lists.
The final player on today’s list is the first-timer. Cole Tucker is ranked 83rd by Fangraphs. The only other mention he got prior to today was from MLB Pipeline, which noted that he was one of the players who just missed, placing him in the 101-105 range.
Here are the average rankings for the top four players from today. I used 110th place for Swaggerty on the BA list and put a + next to the ranking to indicate that his number would likely be higher. They probably have him at least in the 120-130 range. Their list of the top center fielders had Swaggerty ranked 17th overall and a handful of players ahead of him weren’t in the top 100. Last time I did the averages I used 101+ for his rating, but he is clearly lower than that number based on his center field ranking, so I made it a little more realistic.
Mitch Keller
BA – 26
BP – 18
MLB – 19
KL – 24
FG – 37
Average = 24.8
Ke’Bryan Hayes
BA – 49
BP – 55
MLB – 46
KL – 18
FG – 20
Average = 37.6
Oneil Cruz
BA – 79
BP – 91
MLB – 96
KL – 78
FG – 62
Average = 81.2
Travis Swaggerty
BA – 110+
BP – 82
MLB – 87
KL – 47
FG – 56
Average = 76.4+
As you see from these rankings, Keller is considered the top prospect and he averages 25th place after today. Hayes is a clear second best in the system, ranking 38th on average. Swaggerty is rated third, though that would change if BA expanded their list and he wasn’t in the top 134 spots. Either way, he’s close to Oneil Cruz in the overall rankings. The only other Pirate to make a top 100 list before today was Calvin Mitchell, who ranked 97th for Baseball Prospectus.
