Keith Law Gives Pittsburgh Pirates Farm System a Positive Review

The Pittsburgh Pirates have steadily invested in their minor league system over the last few years.  It looks like it could be paying off.

Since Ben Cherington has taken over the Pittsburgh Pirates Front Office, the team has quickly changed the script on their minor league system.  Under Neal Huntington the quality of the farm system had a lot of ups and downs.  Toward the end of his tenure as the Buc’s GM, the farm system started to decline.  By the time Huntington decided to start and reinvest in the minor, it was too late and the team had moved on to Cherington.

Now Huntington had to go.  It was time for a change as the previous regime started to become stale in their actions and words.  Bringing in Cherington allowed the Pittsburgh Pirates Organization to do something that Huntington could not rebuild.  Huntington spent years rebuilding and lost his job when he became complacent with being “it it”.  A rebuild has put this team in hopefully a better position for years to come.

Keith Law recently released his Top 100 prospect list.  The Pittsburgh Pirates were well represented on the list with 6 of their prospects making the rankings.  Obviously, this is a good thing, but as important as it is to have top prospects the team also needs to have a deep system.

Well according to Law’s recent Top Farm System rankings the Pittsburgh Pirates have one of the best minor league systems in Baseball. Law, who is typically tougher on the Bucs rates them at #6 overall in Baseball. Most other publications have them inside the Top 5 but obviously, they are within that realm.

What this does suggest is that the Pittsburgh Pirates Organization may be top-heavy in Law’s eyes.  The fact that he has 6 prospects ranked among his top 100 one would think they would be ranked inside the top 3 or 4.  However, this is not a slite whats so ever, this ranking is up 10 spots from Law’s rankings a year ago, so things are still moving in the right direction.