Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects Moving Up BP Rankings, While Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon Move Down

Kevin Goldstein has his Midseason 50 Top Prospects up at Baseball Prospectus.  Nobody asked me, but it feels good having three players on the list after the Non-waiver Trade Deadline.  Even if the top ranked pitchers, Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon have taken a dip in the rankings.

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Seriously, wouldn’t it would be tough to be looking at this list today and see another teams names beside one of those right handers?  Cole has been bumped from his preseason spot in the top ten, at number nine.  The Altoona Curve right hander is now ranked number twelve despite a number of prospects no longer being on the list.

The biggest drop was for Jameson Taillon who checked in at number thirteen in the preseason.  Taillon is now ranked number thirty-two.

But the teenager has moved up the list.  We thought Luis Heredia surely would have made a bigger jump especially when one considers the amount of fastballs he has thrown this season.  The Little Horse has moved up five spots to number thirty-seven in Goldstein’s poll.

The interesting news is the emergence of even more Pittsburgh Pirates prospects playing their way up the rankings.  Those players are shortstop Alen Hanson and outfielder Gregory Polanco.  If you check out the tweet below, you can see Goldstein will be ranking ahead of Hanson.

Some solid video of Hanson and Polanco are now up in our Hub section.

And finally KG’s reasoning….