This week, the MLB Pipeline, which ranks major league prospects, ranked its top 100 prospects.
An update is always made after the deadline, in order to take into account the lower ranked teams who have acquired young talent.
Sometimes it helps put things in perspective.
As we can see, it is mainly the lower ranked teams and the emerging teams that have a good network of minors.
The Orioles and Pirates each have six prospects in the top-100. They also each have a top-3 prospect, Jackson Holliday (Baltimore, #1) and Paul Skenes (Pittsburgh, #3).
They are the two most recent first overall picks in the 2022 and 2023 drafts.
The Cubs, Reds, Rockies, Dodgers, Brewers and Mets each have five top-100 prospects. The Red Sox, Guardians, Tigers, Phillies, Padres and Rangers? Four each.
The Blue Jays have only two such prospects, left-handed pitcher Ricky Tiedemann and infielder Orelvis Martinez. The club graduated several and exchanged many hopes.
When we look at the completely right of the table, we see that two teams have no hope in the top-100.
The first one? The Houston Astros. The club won the World Series in 2022, is a championship playoff and gave the Mets its best prospect for Justin Verlander.
It was surely done to the delight of some Mets players…
You might think the Astros GM would have liked to keep Drew Gilbert, but his boss wanted Justin Verlander. It takes what it takes.
That brings us to the second hopeless top team: the Royals.
The Kansas City club is currently in the bottom of the MLB with a record that looks oddly like that of the A’s. The latter, at least, have three top-100 prospects.
The crazy thing is that the A’s have at least some high hopes and have axed the club recently. Their position is “explained” a little better.
But the Royals? The club tries to win, but fails. And there, we see that the formation does not have great hopes to call back to inject new blood into the club.
Blake Mitchell, a 19-year-old receiver who is still far from the Majors, is their best young player. He is not knocking on the doors of the Royals, we will tell each other: we will see him in a few years.
It’s quite sad.
Fans there are better off tying their toques with brooches since the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t very bright.
After all, KC doesn’t have a reputation for paying for free agents to compensate…
