Baltimore Orioles: Looking At MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 List

The 2019  MLB Pipeline Top 30 prospects list for the Baltimore Orioles was released last Monday.  Here is a look at how that list breaks down.

The first version of the Baltimore Orioles Top 30 Prospects list was released on Monday (2/18) by MLB Pipeline.  Unless you are a die-hard minor league fan who was looking for it, you may not have realized that it was released.

This year’s top 30 list is much like the 2018 list following the July non-waiver trade deadline deals; the names in 2019 are the same but the list has been drastically reshuffled.

The list breaks down into two distinct parts: prospects acquired directly by the Orioles and prospects acquired at or after the July non-waiver trade deadline.  Eighteen of thirty (60%) are players drafted or signed by the Orioles and include 17 draftees and one international signee (Alex Wells), 10 (33%) were acquired via 2018 trades and two (7%) are 2018 Rule-5 Draft picks (Richie Martin and Drew Jackson).

The Baltimore Orioles Top 30 Prospects list includes five first-round draft picks.

The Top 30 list currently includes five former first-round draft picks: Grayson Rodriguez (2018), DL Hall (2017), DJ Stewart, Ryan Mountcastle (2015) and Hunter Harvey (2013).  It also has two Competitive Balance picks: Cadyn Grenier (2018) and Zac Lowther (2017).  The remainder of the Orioles draftees on the list are three second-round draft picks, three third-round picks, three fourth-round picks and one fifth-round pick (Robert Neustrom).

Every one of the 2018 July trades resulted in current Top 30 prospects.  Yusniel Diaz (#1), Dean Kremer (#9), Zach Pop (#20) and Rylan Bannon (#23) were acquired in the Manny Machado trade, Dillon Tate (#18) and Cody Carroll (#21) were acquired in the Zack Britton trade, Jean Carlos Encarnacion (#13) and Brett Cumberland (#26) came via the Kevin Gausman trade and finally the Jonathan Schoop trade produced Luis Ortiz (#19) and Jean Carmona (#24).

The top five prospects, Diaz, Mountcastle, DL Hall, Austin Hays and Rodriguez stay the same when compared to the 2018 list as do Blaine Knight (#10) and Neustrom (#30).  There is just one newcomer, Drew Rom at #29.

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Eleven prospects improved their ranking in 2019 with Adam Hall and Lowther leading the way by moving up 14 and 10 spots, respectively.  Brenan Hanifee, Kremer, Stewart, Pop, Keegan Akin and Ryan McKenna all moved up at least five spots in the rankings, as well.  The oldest Orioles prospect on the list is 2012 second-round draft pick Branden Kline.

Eleven prospects saw their ranking fall.  Most notable among those players are Tate (-12), Ortiz (-12), Carmona (-10), Michael Baumann (-6) and Harvey (-4).

A few weeks back, BirdsWatcher published its Top 10 prospects list and nine of our top 10 are among MLB Pipeline’s top 10 for the Orioles with our first six prospects mirroring MLB Pipeline’s.  In the interest of full disclosure, we whiffed by naming Tate as our #10 prospect when comparing the two lists. We will have to see how he plays out.

Prospect lists are, in the end, fun to compile and they spark debate and discussion.  At the end of the day, what really matters is how the prospects perform on the field and not where they are on a list.