37.9 F
Pittsburgh

John Sickels Releases His 2017 Top 20 Pirates Prospects List

Published:

John Sickels over at Minor League Ball, posted his list of the top 20 prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His list includes grades for each player and a description at the top for each grade. Tyler Glasnow is ranked as the #1 prospect and he grades as an A/A-, which ranks him as an elite prospect for Sickels (when two grades are listed, it basically means the player could go either grade). Glasnow was rated as an A last year, so in that sense, he dropped just slightly.

Sickels rounds out his top four with the same players as almost everyone else, though the order tends to differ. Austin Meadows ranks second, Mitch Keller third and Josh Bell is fourth. Kevin Newman ranks fifth, which seems to be a near consensus for everyone. After that, the lists tend to go in different directions.

Sickels rounds out his top ten with (in order) Ke’Bryan Hayes, Taylor Hearn, Nick Kingham, Steven Brault and Cole Tucker. Will Craig ranks 11th, then you have Yeudy Garcia and Travis MacGregor rounding out the top 13 spots.

I stopped at 13, because Sickels lists an extra nine players who could slot in 14-20 in his opinion due to having the same C+ grade as his 14-20 ranked prospects. That’s sort of the same tier system we use, where you’re rating players the same, then just sorting them out based on current preference. Basically, there isn’t a big difference in his mind between #14 (Alen Hanson) and the 29th ranked prospect in the system.

He also includes another 18 prospects in no particular order, who all received a C grade, so you have an idea of what his top 50 (technically 48) would look like if he went that far. The link at the top has all of the details, as well as brief descriptions on each of the top 20 prospects.

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

Related Articles

Article Drop

Latest Articles