Morning Rundown: Baseball America farm system rankings, Mets sign Shintaro Fujinami, Carlos Santana signs
Latest news from around the league.
Baseball America released their Farm System rankings for the 2024 season, and while the Pirates have been well represented in several top 100 lists, including four on BA, they finished mostly in the middle of the pack here.
The Pirates ranked 12th as far as minor league farm systems, fourth among teams in the NL Central.
BA mentions how stacked they are at pitching and noted the risk to the ‘volatility’ of the position.
The Milwaukee Brewers, fresh off of adding two top 100 prospects in the Corbin Burnes trade, moved all the way up to the second spot behind the Baltimore Orioles.
The Cubs (4) and Reds (12) are also ranked ahead of the Pirates.
The New York Mets signed reliever Shintaro Fujinami to a one-year deal worth $3.35 million on Friday.
While the 7.18 ERA doesn’t look good, he did fare much better once he made the switch to the bullpen. His fastball velocity was in the 97th percentile after averaging 98.4 mph in 2023.
Carlos Santana is set to sign a contract with the Minnesota Twins, according to Darren Wolfson.
After beginning 2023 with the Pirates, Santana was traded to the Brewers before the deadline in exchange for prospect Jhonny Severino.
In 94 games with the Pirates Santana hit 12 home runs and drove 53 runs while playing great defense at first base.
With the signing of Rowdy Tellez and return of Andrew McCutchen, there wasn’t too much space left for Santana, as there was talk of him returning to the Pirates.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. Please send in your questions to have them answered! Either comment below with ‘mailbag’ entered in the message or email us at bucsondeckqa@gmail.com.
I look forward to answering what you guys have!
After over 4 years of a rebuild, we have 2 above average position players (both already in the organization), one starting pitcher (also already in the organization) and a good bullpen. This might be the worst run organization in baseball with the next to last owner.
Sure we have several potential players but all have question marks or red flags. Again this front office is terrible.
Gotta love a middling farm system for a team supposedly fresh out of a rebuild! I know these rankings dont mean anything, but that sort of matches the eye test for what we got right now