Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America and MLB Pipeline all have noteworthy prospect articles today, so we threw them all into one article.
Baseball Prospectus released their list of the top 101 prospects, along with prospects who just missed the list. The Pittsburgh Pirates had three players in the top 101 and it’s a little different than the other lists we have seen so far. They have Mitch Keller leading the way for the Pirates, ranking 53rd overall. He’s followed by Oneil Cruz just two spots lower at 55th overall, and ahead of Ke’Bryan Hayes, who ranks 63rd overall.
This list isn’t much different than Baseball America’s top 100, other than Cruz and Hayes are flipped in the team rankings. BA had them ranked Keller (52nd), Hayes (56th) and Cruz (57th).
MLB Pipeline released their list over the weekend and had Keller 39th, Hayes 41st and Cruz 64th.
Speaking of Pipeline’s top 100, they posted their top tools article and Cruz was named as having the best arm among the top 100 prospects. Ke’Bryan Hayes wasn’t named as the best defensive player, but he was one of the “also in the running” players.
Baseball America has started list the top prospects by position. It’s similar to the top ten lists we saw from Pipeline, except that BA will go deeper on each list, and depending on the strength of the position, it could go much deeper than a top ten list. Right-handed pitchers will have upwards of 75 players in a good year. They’re releasing one position per day and they started today with catchers. The Pirates didn’t have anyone listed. If that fact wasn’t obvious to you, please consider purchasing our 2020 Prospect Guide. Spoiler: There wasn’t a single catcher considered for our top 50.