Rangers place 6 in MLB top prospect list; Profar #1

MLB.com has unveiled their top 100 prospect list for 2013, and the Rangers placed six players in the top 100, with wunderkind Jurickson Profar sitting atop the list at #1, edging out the Orioles' Dylan Bundy and Oscar Taveras of the Cardinals.

Interesting (to me, anyway), fully half of the top 10 consists of players who have been traded. Tyler Skaggs, #10, was sent to Arizona in the Dan Haren deal that had Rangers fans complaining that the D-Backs were dumb and gave Haren away to the Angels; Zack Wheeler, #8, went to the Mets in the Carlos Beltran trade; Travis d'Arnaud (#6) and Wil Myers (#4) were moved in high-profile deals this winter for starting pitchers; and Taijuan Walker (#5) was traded to Arizona for Justin Upton, only to have the trade negated when Upton exercised his no-trade clause.

Mike Olt, as expected, was near the top of the list, coming in at #22. The other four Rangers who made the cut, meanwhile, maybe aren't quite what we were anticipating.

The third Ranger on the top 100 list is Luis Sardinas, the shortstop prospect who has lots of tools and skills, but who hasn't stayed healthy. Sardinas, #84 on the MLB.com list, being identified as the #3 prospect in the Ranger system is pretty eye-catching.

The final three Rangers on the list are Cody Buckel (#87), Jorge Alfaro (#88), and Martin Perez (#95). Even with a middling season, it is surprising to me to see Perez drop so far, and be slotted behind Sardinas, Buckel and Alfaro -- Buckel in particular (insert a Fangraphian lecture on the importance of not getting hung up on ordinal ranking).

A quick scan doesn't reveal any teams with more than six prospects in the top 100, although the St. Louis Cardinals matched Texas, with six.