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First Pitch: Breaking Down the Pirates’ Mid-Season Top 50 Prospects

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On Friday, we released our Mid-Season Pirates Top 50 Prospect list. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s well worth the price of a monthly subscription alone (or even the Annual subscription), with over 5,000 words on the farm system, our latest top prospect list, and links to the latest analysis for each player. Overall, it’s packed with information you can’t get anywhere else, and it’s only for subscribers.

I did want to do a breakdown of the top 50, getting a feel for where the system is at right now. As we know, the Pirates have a lot of talent coming through in the upper levels at a lot of positions. I wanted to dig deeper, looking at how the rest of the system stacks up. Consider this a freebie analysis of the list for the free readers, and I hope you guys decide to join us, especially with the trade deadline coming up.

By Position (Top Prospect in Parenthesis)

RHP – 20 (Tyler Glasnow)

LHP – 5 (Steven Brault)

C – 2 (Reese McGuire)

1B – 3 (Josh Bell)

2B – 4 (Alen Hanson)*

SS – 4 (Kevin Newman)

3B – 5 (Will Craig)**

OF – 7 (Austin Meadows)

*Adam Frazier wasn’t on the list, but would be the top 2B prospect if he qualified.

**We have Ke’Bryan Hayes as the best 3B prospect long-term, but Craig is technically at the position now, which is why he shows up here.

Notes: There’s a pretty good distribution of talent throughout the system, with at least one top 20 prospect at each position. The top ten includes players from every position except LHP and 2B, and those guys just missed. The Pirates are strong in all areas, but the biggest strength is RHP, even when Glasnow graduates.

How Acquired

Draft – 34

International – 13

Trade – 3

Notes: Someone noted the other day that only three players were acquired via trade. This is a sign of the Pirates being buyers for so many years. The players they got via trade were Steven Brault and Stephen Tarpley (both came via the Travis Snider deal), and Trevor Williams (compensation trade for losing Jim Benedict). You’d like to see more trades like the Snider deal (they should have done this with Neil Walker, rather than trading for Jon Niese, and they should take this approach with other departing players in the future), as that will really help boost the system after the current wave of prospects graduates.

They also don’t have any international prospects in the top ten (although two of them are in a tier where you could easily put them in the top ten). This is probably due in part to the lowered funds in Latin America making it even more difficult to get top prospects. The Pirates used to budget $3 M per year, and that didn’t count special cases like Luis Heredia or Harold Ramirez. Now they’re getting $2 M per year to spend. Most of their best signings have come in at under $300,000, and a lot of the best players have signed for less than $100,000. If you figure that $1 M less gives them 10 fewer players per year, then they’ve had about 30 fewer signings the last three years than they would have from 2009-11. That greatly reduces their odds of landing a breakout prospect.

By Level

Pittsburgh/Indianapolis (MLB/AAA) – 13

Altoona (AA) – 11

Bradenton (A+) – 8

West Virginia (A) – 4

Morgantown (A-) – 4

Bristol (RK) – 4

GCL Pirates (RK) – 6

Notes: It’s difficult determining where certain guys should be classified at the top level, since a few guys have been switching back and forth between the majors. So for this purpose, we’ll just count MLB/AAA in one group. Almost half of the top 50 prospects are in Double-A or higher. This shows that a lot of help is on the way. We’ve seen that already, with prospects arriving from Indianapolis. However, that won’t stop this year, with guys like Austin Meadows, Kevin Newman, Reese McGuire, Clay Holmes, Brandon Waddell, Tyler Eppler, and so on arriving in future years.

It makes sense that most of the top prospects are in the upper levels plus Bradenton. Those guys have had longer to get established, and thus, more time to improve their prospect status. One issue I see in the lower levels is that the Pirates have taken so many college hitters with high OBPs and no power, and those guys largely haven’t worked out, Kevin Newman excluded. The Pirates created a strong farm system by adding a lot of upside, and then seeing some of their high upside picks break out. They’re adding fewer of those guys, in part due to the international issues noted above, but also in part due to their lack of ability to take a lot of high upside prep players. We’ll see if that hurts them in the long-run, or slows their farm system rebuild. They can certainly counter this by trading for high upside, lower level guys, like they did in the Travis Snider deal.

Check out the Mid-Season Top 50, if you haven’t already. If you’re not a subscriber, you should definitely sign up today to get that list, plus all of our other great content. Since this is Sunday, we review all of the previous week’s best features, so that you don’t miss anything important. Here is the recap from this week, with all articles for subscribers:

10. The Pirates have two interesting fringe 1B prospects in West Virginia in Carlos Munoz and Danny Arribas. Munoz started the year at the end of our Top 50 as a flier, but fell off the mid-season list. Arribas has had an interesting season, but isn’t quite up to top 50 status. Abigail Miskowiec looks at each prospect, and sees which one might have a future beyond A-ball.

9. Ke’Bryan Hayes has been injured and missing a lot of time in the past few weeks. Abigail Miskowiec talked with him about what has been ailing him, finding out that he’s dealing with a back injury right now.

8. Casey Hughston was demoted from West Virginia to Extended Spring Training earlier in the season, due to high strikeout issues and a lack of power. Since his return, Abigail Miskowiec writes that the strikeouts are still there, although slightly down, but that the power has increased.

7. Eric Wood is having an impressive season in Altoona, finally tapping into his raw power. Sean McCool tells an interesting story about how Wood was a pitcher who turned into a position player after a random home run derby.

6. Max Moroff got off to a slow start in Indianapolis, but has since been putting up numbers similar to his 2015 season. Brian Peloza looks at those numbers, and the changes Moroff made to get these results so far.

5. Stephen Tarpley has struggled with his fastball command this year, although his off-speed stuff has improved, with the potential for an above-average slider. I looked at Tarpley’s progression this year, and what has led to his command issues lately.

4. Cole Tucker isn’t putting up the best numbers in Bradenton, but all of the tools are there on display in the live reports. I wrote about what I’ve seen from Tucker this year, talking with him about his experience in Bradenton.

3. Trevor Williams has looked great in his last five starts. This week, Brian Peloza wrote about what has worked for Williams lately, noting that he is finally healthy, which is the biggest factor here. After that article went up, Williams threw eight shutout innings in his next start, keeping the production going.

2. Andrew McCutchen has struggled this year, with his strikeout rate way up. Alan Saunders looks at the strikeouts and what has led to McCutchen’s plate patience issues.

1. And finally, here is our Mid-Season Top 50 Prospect List.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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