Baseball America updated their top 100 prospects list on Monday, adding in draft picks and making some changes among the top prospects. The Pittsburgh Pirates did well on this list, though the rankings might be a little surprising.
Oneil Cruz is ranked as the top prospect for the Pirates now and he actually moved up the list, going from 36th to 32nd. Cruz has an .887 OPS in Altoona this year, though he’s been out of action for nearly a month with a forearm injury. He had a small setback recently, so he won’t be seeing too much more playing time this year. He could make up time this winter in the Dominican and/or in the Arizona Fall League, so the lost time won’t have a huge effect on him unless he has another setback in his recovery.
After Cruz, first overall draft pick Henry Davis ranks 51st on the list. What is really interesting here is that he is fourth among all 2021 draft picks and they all fall after Cruz on this list, so even the best in this class would have still been ranked second for the Pirates on this list. Davis jumps onto this list as the eighth best catching prospect in baseball.
Following Davis, the Pirates also had Quinn Priester in 62nd, Nick Gonzales in 64th and Liover Peguero in 88th. Priester and Peguero dropped, but only in a sense that draft picks were added ahead of them. However, Gonzales dropped 27 spots, so this was a combo of draft picks and performance knocking him down. It probably doesn’t help that he left Sunday’s game early for an unknown reason.
