UPDATE 10:01 PM: According to Dejan Kovacevic, Baseball America ranks the Pirates as the 16th best farm system in their prospect handbook.
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A lot of top prospect lists are coming out this week. Here’s a look at some of the notable lists:
-Keith Law has his top 100, ranking Pedro Alvarez 35th, Jose Tabata 57th, and Tony Sanchez 82nd. Law has never been a fan of Alvarez. Law also listed Brad Lincoln as one of the ten prospects who just missed the top 100. Finally he has his top 10 prospects by organization. The biggest surprise to me? Brooks Pounders at number 9.
-Jonathan Mayo released his top 50 list on MLB.com yesterday. Pedro Alvarez was the only to make the list, ranking at number eight.
-FanHouse has their top 100 prospects list. Pedro Alvarez ranks 13th, Jose Tabata ranks 69th, and Tony Sanchez ranks 75th.
-Jim Callis of Baseball America gave his top ten prospects in an ESPN Chat. Pedro Alvarez was number five, behind Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Mike Stanton, and Jesus Montero. Also, this one is a month old, but John Manuel rates Pedro Alvarez seventh in his top 20 prospects.
-Speaking of Baseball America, they will be shipping their Prospect Handbook this week. I’m hoping to have mine by tomorrow. The book includes organizational rankings, as well as the top 30 prospects for all teams, and all of the individual top 50 lists by their writers. Last year their top 100 list came out in late February. My guess is that Alvarez will rank in the 5-7 range, based on the above rankings.
-Speaking of organizational rankings, here are some rankings, and where the Pirates are ranked:
Overall it looks like Alvarez is a consensus 5-15 prospect (outside of Law’s ranking), Tabata is just outside of the top 50 in most rankings, and Tony Sanchez is around the 75 range, with Brad Lincoln just barely missing the list.
I was surprised that FanHouse had the Pirates at 28th, especially with three prospects in the top 100, and one in the top 15. No way that there are only two teams worse than the Pirates. I’d agree with 15-20 range, but 28th means someone didn’t do their homework on the system, outside of the guys in the top 100.
