Dansby Swanson and Kevin Maitan named to MLB Pipeline top shortstop prospect list

Another day, another commendation of the Braves minor league system.

The Braves system has been doing quite well for itself in MLB Pipeline’s top 10 positional prospects rollout feature 2 in the LHP slot (Newcomb, Allard), 1 third baseman (Austin Riley), and 2 second basemen (Albies and Demeritte) making lists in the last week or so.

Today, Pipeline posted their top 10 shortstop prospects and, unsurprisingly, Dansby Swanson was on that list.

There are a couple surprising bits here, or at least a bit surprising especially to those who don’t follow the goings-on of the minor leagues. Many fans expected Dansby to be the #1 shortstop prospect in baseball, but that mantle was given to Gleyber Torres of the Yankees and Swanson was named #2. Torres is a very high ceiling player who just put up video game numbers in the AFL this year, so an aggressive rating on him is hardly a knock on anyone. JP Crawford and Amed Rosario also gave Dansby a lot of competition near the top of this list as shortstop is arguably one of the deepest positions in the minor league ranks in terms of prospects.

The other surprise was seeing Kevin Maitan end up on this list despite not even playing a professional game yet. Obviously Maitan was the jewel of this past year’s J2 class and has gotten lofty comps to guys like Chipper Jones and Miguel Cabrera, but shortstop is a very deep position and it would have been perfectly reasonable if Pipeline had waited a bit to rank him particularly highly. However, instead he was named the #7 shortstop prospect in all of baseball which will likely only add to the excitement he is accumulating amongst Braves fans.