Baseball America continued their rankings of the top prospects by position on Tuesday morning, completing the infield with their shortstop list.
The Pittsburgh Pirates had a total of four players make the first four lists. They were shutout at the catching position last Wednesday, then saw Mason Martin ranked among the top first basemen. Kevin Kramer ranked 12th on the second base list. Then on Monday morning, both Ke’Bryan Hayes and Colin Moran made the third base list.
Tuesday’s shortstop list shows how deep the position is for prospects. BA considers it to be a five star class this year and their top 100 prospects list included the first 13 players on their top shortstop list. Kevin Newman and Cole Tucker didn’t make their top 100 list, but they are listed among the top 20 shortstops today.
Newman ranks as the 17th best at the position, two spots ahead of Tucker. Newman was ranked as the seventh best shortstop prospect by BA at this time last year, so he has dropped 11 spots in the rankings. Tucker was the 16th best last year. While he has also dropped, it appears that his small drop is due more to the strength of the position now compared to 2017. Tucker dropped three spots and this year’s top 100 list includes three more shortstops than last year’s list.
Tucker got some love yesterday when both Fangraphs and ZiPS projections put him among the top 100 prospects.
