The Top 10

John Perrotto writes for BA about our farm system, naming the top 10 and then ranking the players with the best tools, etc. Our top two prospects happen to be our last two top draft picks (Walker first), which I suppose can be taken for a good sign. It's kind of depressing to read how BA's top prospects of ours for the last decade have panned out, they mostly play for other teams (including WVU football) or are named Chad Hermansen except for the last couple years. The rest of the article talks about pitching and how McCutchen and Walker are the first two real hitting prospects to come along in a while, which is true. It's also interesting to note that the Littlefield/Graham farm system has finished above .500 in each of the last four years, something that only happened once in the prior 33 years of Pirates history. That seems like a pretty positive stat, but how much of that is due to players playing in levels too low for their age, I can't say (though it's something Littlefield is pretty notorious for I think).