Prospect Watch: Why Isn't Lonnie White Jr. Ranked Higher?

Analyzing the flaws with national prospect lists that all use the same source as the foundation of their rankings.

It occurred to me this morning that I spent the last two weeks putting together my new top 30 prospect list, while also updating the homepage design on Pirates Prospects.

That shouldn’t be a surprise.

There was a time during my ranking process that I had Sammy Stafura in my top 10, Omar Alfonzo in my top 20, and Hyun Seung Lee in my top 30.

What is a surprise to me is the ranking that Lonnie White Jr. gets everywhere else.

I had White as my number three prospect in the system. After settling on that ranking, I looked to see where other outlets had him.

MLB’s recent update had him 26th. Baseball America’s update after the deadline had him 29th. FanGraphs didn’t even have White in their top 45 prospects.

On Friday night, White hit his 24th homer of the season. He then stole his 20th base, becoming the only 20/20 player in the Pirates’ organization this year.

I noted in my top 30 write-up that White has two concerns: Injuries and strikeouts.

I’m less concerned by the injuries at this point. Early in his career, White’s injury history was preventing valuable development time. Now? The injuries have been reduced, but even if they return, they can only keep a valuable player off the field. There’s a difference between injuries that prevent a talented player from realizing his potential and injuries that prevent a productive player from taking the field. White is now the latter.

Even the strikeouts are less of a concern.

White is productive even with the strikeouts, with a high walk rate, power, and speed. I’m not even sure the strikeout rate is set in stone. Over the last 30 days, White has a 21.5% strikeout rate. That’s down from his 31% rate in Altoona on the season. He did the same thing in Greensboro. He had a 35% strikeout rate in 2024-25, then improved to 21.2% this year.

This is now two levels where White has shown the ability to tone down his strikeout rate while still maintaining power from an aggressive approach.

I don’t mind an overly aggressive approach leafing to strikeouts when it leads to power results. When a player shows he can scale back the aggression and still put up power results? That’s special.

I don’t think anything is set in stone with White’s strikeouts in either direction. I don’t want to over-value the last 30 days, and I don’t want to say that his ~30% rate is the real story.

What I will say is that White has been completely overlooked by the prospect ranking industry.

You can check out White’s latest home run in the Plays of the Day video below.

My Own Oversights

One player who was a late removal from my top 30 was Rafael Flores Jr. That was more a presentation decision.

I had Flores ranked in Tier 5, which would have put him around the top 25. At the end of the process, I bumped him down to Tier 6. I also wanted to close out the top 30 with lottery tickets in the lower levels, so Flores got bumped to 31.

He followed that with three homers in the last two games.

A big reason I have Flores ranked so low is due to his Triple-A results. He had a .228/.362/.342 line in Indianapolis this year, and this was after some early struggles before being acquired at last year’s deadline. In his Triple-A career, he has a .742 OPS and 11 home runs in 482 plate appearances.

The bulk of the value from Flores is going to come from his power. He doesn’t grade well defensively behind the plate, and he’s not a good hitter for average.

There were some reports after the two homer game of some adjustments and improvements that Flores was making on both sides of the ball, which could change my outlook. Those updates also come from the Pirates, which adds the disclaimer that they are going to hype up their own players.

Flores might just be an adjustment away from being god enough behind the plate to be a backup MLB catcher.

The Pirates already made that type of adjustment with Henry Davis, which means they might be able to make the same adjustment with Flores.

He might also make an adjustment that leads to power he didn’t get close to at the top levels of the minors.

I might have been wrong to drop him 5-6 spots out of the top 30, but the last two games doesn’t drastically change my rankings. I don’t think I’d rate him any higher than 25 without sustained improvements on both sides of the ball.

National Ranking Flaws

I only cover one system.

Even that is difficult to keep up with.

MLB Pipeline, Baseball America, and FanGraphs all cover 30 organizations, in an attempt to provide top 30s for every team, plus interwoven rankings for a top 100. ESPN is another small prospect ranking operation.

MLB, Baseball America, and ESPN’s lists are all used for the league’s Prospect Promotion Incentive, so there’s clearly importance placed on the national ranks.

The only way these outlets can cover this many organizations is via input from the teams they cover. That’s why you see the same group-think across every ranking system, with only slight variance per outlet.

I used to give the Pirates some input to older Pirates Prospects lists. My process was reversed from the national rankings. Instead of relying on the Pirates for the foundation of information and making my own adjustments like the national outlets do, I’d check for input with the Pirates after my site’s list was created from information the site had gathered.

Ever since 2024, my rankings have been an individual effort, seeking no input from the team.

I have been covering this organization for a very long time. Long enough to be able to see when other outlets are getting input from the team.

Carlos Tejera is a great example of this.

The Pirates signed Tejera out of the Dominican Republic earlier this year for just under six-figures. The 18-year-old outfielder didn’t put up great numbers in the DSL, but it was obvious the Pirates liked him.

I first noticed the Pirates liked Tejera when he was getting hyped up by Anthony Murphy. A few years ago, Murphy was writing for my site, and during that time I noticed a trend.

I would do an interview with the Pirates’ minor league director, John Baker, which mostly consisted of me asking about players I was interested in writing about. At the end of each interview, Baker would talk about some players I didn’t ask about who the team liked. Several times, Murphy contacted me within days of the interview wanting to write about the same players Baker mentioned. That’s not a coincidence. Murphy’s entire time on my site was filled with hyping up obscure prospects who I only ever heard members of the organization hype up.

I have more than just this circumstantial evidence that has led to me knowing for years that Murphy has been a mouthpiece for the Pirates, even before he started his own site to compete with mine — one day after I announced my intentions to return to writing to provide accountability toward the organization’s failed rebuild.

When Murphy started hyping up Tejera earlier this season, I knew the Pirates were actually hyping him up.

It was later confirmed that the Pirates liked Tejera, when they promoted him to the FCL, despite a .230 average and a .774 OPS in the DSL. Very few players get promoted from the DSL mid-season.

I’m not saying the Pirates are wrong in liking this particular player in their system.

There are aspects which stand out about Tejera. His walk rate in 113 plate appearances in rookie ball was 21.2%, which is identical to his strikeout rate. That type of plate patience in the lower levels is rare. He has speed, with ten stolen bases. He also flashed some pop, with two homers in nine games in the FCL, though his limited exit velocity was average at best. He’s more of a sleeper for the back of the top 50 in my own rankings.

Tejera ended up appearing on both the MLB and Baseball America top 30 lists, and was ranked one spot ahead of Lonnie White Jr. on each list.

Knowing how this process works, the Pirates legitimately like Tejera. Everyone who relies on them for information gets a hyped up prospect report about Tejera. As a result, Tejera gets placed in top 30 lists and written about as an emerging prospect.

This isn’t necessarily wrong. It just adds important perspective to certain rankings and prospect opinions. The Pirates’ own internal opinion is the base for MLB and BA. Murphy is basically a team writer, with little difference from team employee Jason Mackey.

All of this raises the question of the point of prospect rankings.

Is the point to know how the Pirates rate their own players?

Or, is the point to have an objective view in addition to the team’s view?

The opposite situation comes up every year with the draft.

BA and MLB compile their amateur draft rankings through input from all teams. There’s some gamesmanship that would be involved with this process, but no team’s internal rankings match the national rankings.

After the draft this year, Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington said that Derek Curiel, Aiden Ruiz, and Chris Rembert were all in their top 15 overall rankings for the draft.

Maybe that’s post-draft hype. Maybe it’s true.

If it’s true, that means the Pirates had an internal ranking that was completely different from every other team in the league, who allowed Ruiz and Rembert to fall to picks 44 and 51.

Maybe the Pirates were right about those two with their own internal rankings. Maybe there’s a reason Ruiz was rated no higher than 32nd and Rembert was rated no higher than 47th among the national outlets.

When it came time to rank those players in the updated top 30, MLB and BA reflected the Pirates’ high rankings. MLB had Ruiz as the sixth best prospect in the system and Rembert ninth overall. BA had Ruiz 7th and Rembert 10th.

By comparison, I have Ruiz 14th and Rembert 22nd.

I might be wrong. The Pirates might be wrong. Time will tell.

But there’s clear group-think taking place with the BA/MLB rankings, and it stems from the fact that the Pirates’ input forms the base of their rankings. This is reflected with Ruiz, Rembert, and Tejera.

BA and MLB both had Tejera inside the top 30, one spot ahead of White. They both had Ruiz around 6/7 and Rembert around 9/10.

My own rankings don’t follow that group-think, because my opinion is the only scouting input that goes into my own rankings.

This isn’t to create a comparison where one ranking is better than the other. It’s to provide an objective ranking that isn’t another repeat of the Pirates’ own internal view.

That type of ranking exists at draft time, when the Pirates can tout their own internal rankings as what they trust over the national rankings that differ. Following the draft, everything devolves back to the Pirates’ internal rankings as the foundation of every analysis of their system.

There needs to be an objective view to give an alternate look at the system. That’s where my rankings come into play.

My rankings aren’t meant to be better. They’re just meant to be different. They’re meant to be an objective view of the team, separate from the team’s own internal rankings, and all of the group-think rankings that build off those internal rankings.

The value of that is when a discrepancy exists with someone like White.

If the Pirates were to ever let White go elsewhere, and he had success, it might be looked at as “Who could have known a prospect barely inside the top 30 would have success in the Majors?” Likewise, if Ruiz doesn’t work out, the current group think provides an excuse of “Everyone missed on him”, even though everyone is basing their rankings off the same source.

That’s the flaw with the national rankings, and it’s why more independent sources are needed.

Unfortunately, there are very few people as crazy as I am to put in the time and energy to provide an objective opinion for Pirates fans to digest.

Who knows? Maybe that’s a good thing.

Until Lonnie White moves up in the national rankings…

-Tim Williams