Yesterday, we took a look at the new prospect rankings from Baseball Prospectus, which had five Pittsburgh Pirates’ players in the top 50. That includes Jameson Taillon, who they left off the list due to injury, but noted he would have been in the top twenty. Baseball America has released their new list today and they have two Pirates, Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell.
Glasnow ranks #7 on the new list, moving that high because so many players from their top 20 have graduated to the majors already. You have to go all the way down to #45 for Bell, who they say has shown power and the ability to hit for average, just not at the same time. The also listed Taillon among the injured prospects in this article(subscription required), which presumably cost him his spot in the top 50. The recent abdominal injury kept him off the Baseball Prospectus list and likely did the same for BA.
The preseason top 100 from BA had Glasnow #17, Taillon #30, Austin Meadows #42, Bell #65 and Reese McGuire #98. Those are the five that made the Baseball Prospectus list, just in a different order. With so many players graduating to the majors ahead of him, it’s a little hard to believe Austin Meadows didn’t make the updated BA list. To be left off the new list, he had to drop at least 23 spots(they noted 14 of the top 20 graduated) and that is with him hitting .288/.357/.384 as one of the youngest players in a league not known for offense.
I personally have the same five ranked as the top prospects in the system, with Alen Hanson not far off that fifth spot. I can’t say how many Pirates should be among the top 50 prospects now because I don’t know enough about the other players on the list, but for just the Pirates’ system, I would have them ranked Glasnow, Meadows, Taillon, Bell, McGuire and Hanson at this point.