Pittsburgh Pirates Consensus Top Prospects
The Pittsburgh Pirates consensus top 20 prospects and a tiered ranking approach from the midseason prospect updates.
There have been a few big updates to the top prospect lists around the internet over the last week. I decided to put them all together below to get a consensus ranking of the system.
The Updates
FanGraphs - June 3rd
ESPN - June 1st
Baseball America - May 18th
MLB Pipeline - Recurring Updates
The Method
ESPN only lists the top 10 prospects. Baseball America and MLB both list their top 30 prospects. FanGraphs goes all the way to 50.
I have my own opinions on the tendencies from these individual rankings. I’ll start with the league source.
MLB Pipeline does the worst job of updating their lists. They have an update at the start of the season, then keep the same rankings while only removing players who graduate, or adding players who join the system. This shows with the ranking of Termarr Johnson, who was outside of the top 10 in the other three lists, but still holding his pre-season rank of 5 on MLB. That has moved up with the graduations of Konnor Griffin and Bubba Chandler, and ignores the struggles from Johnson in Triple-A.
ESPN has a simple top ten list. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, and their rankings are in line with the other three groups. The biggest place they differed was a higher ranking on Easton Carmichael, who finished 10th on ESPN, along with the highest ranking on Murf Gray. They’re high on recently drafted college guys in A-ball.
FanGraphs tends to have more aggressive rankings than the other three, especially at the lower levels. This was most prominent with Johan De Los Santos, who finished third in the FanGraphs rankings, despite being 24th for BA and 30th for MLB. De Los Santos was actually ranked fifth, but FanGraphs still had Griffin and Chandler at the top, so I adjusted everyone up two spots. Still, that’s aggressive placement for an FCL player.
If Baseball America has favorites, it usually comes from the international pipeline, where they put in a lot of reporting. They had the highest ranking on big bonus prospect Darell Morel, who ranked 7th compared to 15th for FanGraphs and MLB. Their rankings are a bit more conservative than FanGraphs, but they still have a few standouts in the lower levels.
Overall, there’s a lot of group-think that exists between the rankings. They all depend on the Pirates for information, which means there’s not going to be huge variance in the lists. You’ll have outlets with their own personal favorites, but rarely do you get a De Los Santos situation.
Despite the subtle differences, there aren’t any extreme departures in rank across the board. There’s a consensus with Seth Hernandez first overall and Edward Florentino second. Beyond that, there are some differences.
I decided to give a weighted average ranking. I took 35% of FanGraphs and 35% of the BA rankings, then added in 20% for ESPN and 10% for MLB. MLB got the lowest weight, due to the dated process. ESPN was second lowest due to the lack of depth with their simple approach. That left FanGraphs and BA to split 70% of the rankings.
When a player didn’t have a rank in a single list, I gave them the average rank of the other three lists for the fourth spot. For example, anyone who was ranked outside of the top 10 for ESPN usually got an average ranking of the placement in the other three top 30-50 ranks for their ESPN ranking.
Here’s how the consensus turned out.
Consensus Top Prospects
All links go to Pirates Prospects player pages.
Seth Hernandez, SP (Consensus)
Edward Florentino, OF (Consensus)
Wyatt Sanford, SS (High 3, Low 6)
Esmerlyn Valdez, OF (High 4, Low 9)
Jhostynxon Garcia, OF (High 4, Low 7)
Hunter Barco, LHP (High 3, Low 9)
Wilber Dotel, RHP (High 5, Low 11)
Rafael Flores, C (High 6, Low 13)
Murf Gray, 3B (High 6, Low 17)
Termarr Johnson, 2B (High 5, Low 12)
Antwone Kelly, RHP (High 7, Low 17)
Darell Morel, SS (High 7, Low 15)
Khristian Curtis, RHP (High 10, Low 21)
Axiel Plaz, C (High 14, Low 19)
Johan De Los Santos, SS (High 3, Low 30)
Easton Carmichael, C (High 10, Low 24)
Thomas Harrington, RHP (High 12, Low 21)
Reinold Navarro, LHP (High 15, Low 24)
Levi Sterling, RHP (High 13, Low 23)
Sammy Stafura, SS (High 10, Low 30)
There were some players who had a great deal of variance between the high and low. De Los Santos is probably the most extreme example. Sammy Stafura also had a lot of variance, though his high came from MLB, and their process doesn’t update for his struggles and lack of development time this year due to injuries.
I haven’t been ranking prospects for awhile, and I honestly always hated the process of a numerical rank. I’m not the best opinion to seek when it comes to who looks too high and who looks too low. I’ll limit myself to two players who stood out.
Too High: Rafael Flores. He’s struggled at the plate this year in his age 25 season, and is a poor defensive catcher. His primary value comes from a potential to hit for power, and he only has four home runs in 211 plate appearances this season. He’s getting toward post-prospect age with no guarantee of being more than a limited bench option in the majors, and that doesn’t scream top ten prospect to me.
Too Low: Johan De Los Santos. I wouldn’t go as high as FanGraphs went, but I also wouldn’t have him in the bottom third of a top 30 like BA and MLB. He’d contend for the top 10, likely a few spots higher in my ranking than where he sits in the average above. I’m saying that mostly because he’s one of the players who has stood out to me with increased observations over the last month. De Los Santos is one of the best contact hitters in the system, but he’s also at the lowest level. I’d get aggressive for the contact and plate patience abilities, but more conservative than FanGraphs for the level placement.
I took a year off to focus on other areas of my own development. I don’t know much of anything about Easton Carmichael, but Pirates Prospects now has live updates of every game throughout the system, along with plenty of automated resources to follow the team without needing to worry if I can keep up with the updates. That seems like a fair tradeoff.
Having stated that last disclaimer, here’s my best shot at a tiered ranking system, which is what I prefer over numerical.
Tiered Rankings
Tier One: Seth Hernandez
Hernandez is likely to be one of the top prospects in the game during the mid-season top 100 updates. While the Pirates might have other top 100 options, there’s a clear gap between Hernandez and everyone else.
Tier Two: Edward Florentino, Wyatt Sanford
These are younger prospects with top 100 potential, who each show impressive power at a young age. The stats haven’t shown up for Florentino yet this season, while Sanford is having a great season, with the disclaimer it’s in Greensboro. If you wanted to bump Sanford to Tier 3, I wouldn’t argue. He’s just stood out to me in my limited views.
Tier Three: Esmerlyn Valdez, Jhostynxon Garcia, Hunter Barco, Wilber Dotel
This group is the MLB depth out of Indianapolis. They each have starter upside, but it might not be greater than average. They all look great as depth options, and could eventually become strong bench/bullpen guys, or average starters. I think Dotel is already there for a strong bullpen guy. He won’t have prospect status for long, currently looking like one of the few reliable options in the Pirates’ bullpen.
Tier Four: Darrel Morel, Axiel Plaz, Johan De Los Santos, Easton Carmichael
This is where I’m departing from the rankings above and swapping tiers. I’m moving the lower level, higher upside guys up a tier, due to the potential and greater value they provide. The actual tier four from the rankings above has higher floor options, but I tend to value upside and risk in these spots. This group would compete to round out the top ten spots in the system.
Tier Five: Murf Gray, Termarr Johnson, Antwone Kelly, Khristian Curtis, Thomas Harrington
You could make an argument for Gray to be in Tier Four above, but I personally want to see him carry his results to the upper levels before ranking him too high. The others look like a lesser version of the depth in Tier Three. They might not be ready this season, and at best could provide short-term depth. There’s still bench/bullpen or possibly average starter potential. It’s just riskier than the tier three group.
Tier Six: Reinold Navarro, Levi Sterling, Sammy Stafura, Yordany De Los Santos, Omar Alfonzo, Edgleen Perez
The last three players were left off the top 20 above, but all received at least one top 20 ranking from the four outlets. This group is a riskier upside tier compared to tier four. Sterling is the player I’ve followed the most this season. I’m writing this on a night when he struck out nine and whiffed 12 in five innings of work. This isn’t bad upside depth, but I don’t think any of these guys are a jump away from the top 10.
Overall System Thoughts
The Pirates have been churning out some high upside guys the last few years. They were gifted Paul Skenes in 2023. They made great picks to land Griffin and Hernandez in the last two drafts.
There has been some development beyond those first rounders, with some early international promise from Florentino and Valdez. There are some middle round draft hopefuls in Sanford and Gray. The problem with these guys is that it’s too early to start celebrating that the Pirates may have turned a corner with their drafting, signing, and developing.
I don’t see a system that is strong with depth. It’s more a system continuously fueled by some of the best prospects in the game at the top. That’s not a bad thing. If given the choice between strong depth and a weak top of the system, or the best prospects in the game at the top with weaker depth, I’m taking the latter.
Small market teams definitely need cheap depth from their system. However, they can get that depth elsewhere. There’s no alternative to get a Skenes, or a Griffin, or even a Hernandez outside of the draft/sign/develop process.
The Pirates have done well to stack the top of their system. They have other players with upside that could be developed. Projecting overly positive results would ignore the poor track record the Pirates have of developing their own prospects, outside of the top guys in recent years. There has yet to emerge an example of that track record being broken.
It’s definitely not a bad system, but stronger development could allow the Pirates to turn a serious corner, adding strong depth to their current upside plays.
That might solve their bullpen woes in the future.
Until the next time I go live…
-Tim Williams
What's the report on Murf Grays defense at third base? Can he handle the hot corner in the bigs??