Baseball Prospect released their mid-season list of the top 50 prospects and they have four Pittsburgh Pirates, with another one that includes as asterisk. They have Tyler Glasnow ranked #17, followed by Reese McGuire at #29, Josh Bell at #33 and Austin Meadows at #46.
There is also the case of Jameson Taillon, who they noted would have been somewhere in the teens, but they left him off due to the uncertainty of his latest injury. They didn’t say the injury hurts his prospect status, rather the timing of it and the unknown success/recovery time makes it impossible to rank him at this point.
The high ranking for McGuire might sound surprising, but they have always been very high on him and strong defense at a premium position carries a lot of weight on their list. They believe he will at least be an average hitter because he controls the strike zone well.
Their mid-season top 50 from last year had four players, and Reese McGuire was one of the 8-10 names that just missed. The difference with that list was Nick Kingham was on it and Austin Meadows didn’t make it. They have also been lower than most on Meadows in the past and even recently as seen below, so the fact that he made the current list shows that they are starting to come around more on him. Kingham obviously didn’t make the list due to Tommy John surgery, which will have him up until at least this time next year.
As for the movement from their preseason top 101 list, Glasnow advanced four spots, McGuire 30 spots, Bell 25 spots and Meadows wasn’t even on the list. Even Taillon would have moved up, as they had him 26th before the year began, so they believe the Pirates have really improved recently. Part of that has to do with players graduating to the majors, but that alone wouldn’t explain the significant jumps by McGuire, Bell and Meadows.