Last week we released our updated top 20 Pirates prospects, noting how strong the system is, especially in the top ten. Today Jim Callis of Baseball America released his updated top ten Pirates prospects, coming to the same conclusion about the quality of players.
Callis had a few differences in his list. The first difference was that we had Tyler Glasnow third overall and Alen Hanson fourth. Callis had Glasnow fifth and Hanson seventh, noting command issues with Glasnow and that his ranking for Hanson felt low. One similarity is that he had Austin Meadows one spot ahead of Josh Bell. He also had Reese McGuire in the top seven, ahead of Nick Kingham (8th) and Luis Heredia (9th). We had Kingham seventh, Heredia eighth, and McGuire ninth.
To round out his list, Callis had Tony Sanchez at number ten, noting that he is showing signs he might be a big league regular. We had Sanchez 11th, with Dilson Herrera rounding out our top ten. Callis noted that Herrera and Stetson Allie couldn’t be squeezed onto the list due to the quality of names.
From a tiered perspective, I don’t think there were many differences. I can see a lot of top ten lists starting out with Taillon and Polanco. From there, I think the next group of Glasnow, Hanson, Meadows, Bell, Kingham, Heredia, and McGuire will be ranked in different orders, depending on your preference for each player, and how you feel about their weaknesses. You could also group Dilson Herrera or Tony Sanchez in that tier, although they’d probably round out the top ten in most lists, and wouldn’t go higher.
Overall it’s looking like a strong system right now. When you’ve got a strong defensive catching prospect who has a .955 OPS in Triple-A, and he can’t go higher than tenth overall in your system, you know things are strong. You could say the same about Luis Heredia being an 18 year old capable of hitting the upper 90s with his fastball, and having the potential for three plus pitches. In the past, that type of pitcher would have been an easy top five, and probably would be for almost every other system.
