Baseball America released their list of the top ten prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday. No surprise that Tyler Glasnow heads the list, as he is considered one of the top prospects in all of baseball. Glasnow is followed by Austin Meadows, Josh Bell and Jameson Taillon in the top four. After that, BA threw a bit of a curve into their rankings, which you can compare to the mid-season rankings listed below.
Harold Ramirez is ranked fifth, while Reese McGuire, Cole Tucker, Kevin Newman, Ke’Bryan Hayes and Elias Diaz round out the top ten.
During Baseball America’s top ten mid-season update for the Pirates, they had Tyler Glasnow, Josh Bell, Austin Meadows and Alen Hanson in the top four, followed by Jameson Taillon, Cole Tucker, Reese McGuire, Elias Diaz, Nick Kingham and JaCoby Jones. That list didn’t include the draft picks, who were all new to the system at the time. They seemed to be high on Tucker at the time, who underwent surgery and will end up missing a full season between his time missed in 2015 and his estimated return time next year. That didn’t hurt his rankings for the postseason list. They were also high on Jones, who was traded away in July and ended up striking out 165 times in 2015, then got suspended for 50 games following the season.
Harold Ramirez moved far up their list since July, although he was hitting the ball well then, so it seems like they wanted to see what he could do for a full season. Alen Hanson not making the list is a surprise for two reasons. The first is that they were obviously high on him in July, ranking him ahead of Taillon. The other reason is that he was young for AAA and showed terrific defense at second base, plus he still has the tools to be a lead-off hitter in the majors, so a player like that is usually ranked pretty high, even in a deep/strong system like the Pirates have right now.