Baseball America continued their rankings of the top prospects in baseball on Thursday morning with the shortstop list. The first three positions covered so far (catcher, first base and second base) aren’t as deep as shortstop. The catcher spot was a top 20, but first base and second base only had a top ten due to the lack of strong prospects at the position. Mason Martin ranked as the tenth best at first base back on Tuesday.
BA has Oneil Cruz ranked as the tenth best shortstop. He’s ranked as the 57th best prospect in baseball by BA, so that tells you how deep the position is right now. MLB Pipeline didn’t have Cruz in their top ten shortstops, yet they have him as the #64 prospect on their top 100.
The second prospect on the list for the Pirates wouldn’t have been mentioned here if the article was released a few days ago. Livier Peguero, who was acquired in the Starling Marte trade, ranks 23rd among all shortstop prospects.
To show the strength/depth of this list, the 17th best shortstop is a top 100 prospect. That means that Peguero isn’t far outside of the top 100. In fact, all 30 of the top shortstop prospects received at least consideration for the top 100 list according to BA’s list of 98 players who received at least one vote from one of their writers, but didn’t make the top 100. For comparison, only six first basemen made that combined list of top 100 and 98 considered players.
