Prospect Rankings

Fangraphs had their 2014 top 100 rankings come out today which gives us another major list to shuffle through.  I thought I would take a couple minutes to compile some of the lists we have seen to date to get a better feel for where the top prospects from the Bucs are landing.  There are a few things we know about prospects:

1. There are no sure things
2. Rankings are not always correct
3. Even with no. 1 and no. 2 I think everyone can agree the stars in MLB were typically highly rated prospect at one point in time.  So it's a good thing to have more highly rated prospects.

Here is how they rated (sorry the formatting does not make it easy to add this info):

	MLB	BP	KL	FAN	Average
Gregory Polanco	13	24	13	17	17
Jameson Taillon	16	19	27	20	21
Tyler Glasnow	27	42	20	43	33
Austin Meadows	45	89	35	48	54
Alen Hanson	67	115	74	74	83
Nick Kingham	115	80	73	75	86
Josh Bell	74	77	97	115	91
Reese McGuire	115	59	115	90	95

If a player when not ranked I simply added a total of 115 as I think that's probably a fair guess and there were not to many to throw off the average.  The thing that really stands out to me about this group is its diversity, not just in positions but in their level in the minors.  You have three pitchers and five hitters, three in AAA, one in AA, two in A+, and two in A ball.  That seems to be pretty true as you stretch through the top 10 and down towards the 20th rated player.

This is a time to enjoy the major league product but the minors definitely should not be ignored because if this team is to be successful over the next five to ten years it will be greatly dependent on the results of what appears to be the most talented group of prospects the Pirates have seen in quite some time.