Earlier today, Baseball America released their new list of the top 100 prospects. They had three Pittsburgh Pirates among the top 80 players. At the same time, Baseball Prospectus put out their list of the top 101 prospects in the game. They like the farm system a little more, placing five Pirates on their list.
BP has Mitch Keller ranked first among all Pirates. He is ranked as the 18th best prospect, eight spots ahead of his placement on the Baseball America list today. The interesting part is where that ends up placing him among right-handed pitchers. MLB Pipeline had him fourth for his position. BA has him as the ninth best right-handed pitcher. For Prospectus, he is ranked second only to Houston’s Forrest Whitley. Despite being separated by just eight spots on the two lists, BA and BP have Keller seven spots apart among right-handed pitchers. It just shows you how strong the position is right now.
Ke’Bryan Hayes was ranked 49th earlier today by BA and Prospectus has him just slightly lower at 55th overall. He ranks seventh among third basemen for BP. That’s after finishing fourth at the spot for both Pipeline and BA.
While Oneil Cruz was the third player on BA’s list today (79th overall), he doesn’t rank third for BP. That spot goes to 2018 first round pick Travis Swaggerty, who ranks 82nd overall and 21st among all outfielders. Cruz is nine spots below him in 91st place. That puts him 13th at shortstop, two spots below his rank among shortstops on the BA list.
The final spot goes to Calvin Mitchell, who ranks 97th overall. He wasn’t on the BA list today, though they did have him ranked 99th during their mid-season update.
18. Mitch Keller
55. Ke’Bryan Hayes
82. Travis Swaggerty
91. Oneil Cruz
97. Calvin Mitchell
Just a reminder that we will have a live discussion thread for MLB Pipeline’s top 100 list, which will be revealed this Saturday night at 6PM EST on MLB Network. After that hour long show, they will be releasing their lists of the top ten MLB center fielders and left fielders. I’ll be watching all three shows and updating the article throughout the three hour stretch. So join along to discuss the top 100 rankings and discuss whether or not they got their rankings right on Starling Marte and Corey Dickerson.
