The Orioles' Baseball America top prospect list is out. What are the top takeaways from the new rankings?

This year's Orioles top prospect rankings are impressively deep and uncharacteristically conservative. How did the order of the present top 10 come about?

Well, it’s finally out. 

Every year, the reporting and writing of the Baseball America top prospect rankings for the Orioles system consumes a month of my life and enriches me as much as it challenges me. It’s an opportunity to touch base with contacts inside and outside the organization, expand my knowledge base about the players I cover, and provide as much of that insight as possible to readers.

The resulting list is one I’m always confident in when it comes to scrutiny upon release, but this one was harder to get there with than the rest. The 10th place is always toughest, because it ends up being the public cutoff for months, and the players outside it who are in strong consideration are diminished by being left off. I hope that’s not the perception here, though, because there could have been 14 players rightfully in the top 10 and no one would have batted an eye.

These are the 10 who did make it, though. Check out the list at Baseball America with the full reports here, and if there are any questions you want to add to the BA chat, use this link for the chat at noon. 

In the interim, here are five takeaways from reporting the list, and what I feel readers should know about it.