Pittsburgh Pirates prospect Konnor Griffin is one of the most intriguing players in minor league baseball, as he sits at number one in MLB.com’s top 100 prospect rankings.
Griffin, 19, batted .333 in 122
games last season with Bradenton, Greensboro and Altoona, making him someone to watch right out of the gates. He is a big reason why the Pirates rank No. 3 in ESPN insider Kiley McDaniel’s farm system rankings.
“The way these dollar figures and thus the farm rankings are calculated is based on work by Craig Edwards at FanGraphs (now of the MLBPA), using historical outcomes married to the FV (future value) system that my colleagues and I used at FanGraphs and that I continue to use here. An interesting but not surprising result of this system is that the top prospect in baseball is worth a lot more than the next few, like over 40% more. Sometimes, the gap between those two prospects isn’t that big; sometimes, it’s huge. Obviously, future Hall of Famers tend to be at the top spot, so you can see how this occurred in the empirical data,“ McDaniel wrote.
“Because of that, the Pirates’ figure is boosted by Griffin residing in the top spot in the whole sport. And my point here is that he is the top prospect by a lot — he basically broke the algorithm I made to help with this process — so the gap between him and the next few prospects feels correct this time. If you were to simply take Griffin out of the Pirates’ system, they’d drop to the middle of these rankings; and since Griffin might break camp with the big league team, that could happen as soon as a few months into the major league season. And second-ranked prospect Bubba Chandler (12th in the top 100) likely graduates early in the season too.“
The only teams that ranked ahead of the Pirates on the list were the Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland Guardians. While Griffin is an outlier for the Pirates, it gives the team a lot to look forward to in the future. Griffin’s early returns have been excellent, and that’s why the Pirates felt comfortable moving him all the way to Double-A just months after he was drafted.
Baseball teams aren’t built off of one or two players, but finding a way to land a superstar is difficult. If Pittsburgh has a pitcher in Paul Skenes and a hitter in Griffin, that shouldn’t go unnoticed.
BD community, what are your thoughts on Griffin and the team’s ranking in the minor league rankings? Chime off in the comments section below.
