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This also may have been part of why the Pirates lost so many players (11!) Top 35 Prospects: Pittsburgh Pirates by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel November 26, 2018 Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh Pirates Top 61 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball Born Harrison Michael Ford, in Atlanta, 20 years ago this week, the right-handed-hitting catcher is the son of English immigrants. Whether his ability to go get it in center field bounces back is the X-factor that will determine his ability to play a long-term big league role. His delivery has a relief-only look to it. Thats something to watch as Jones continues to progress through the minors. 2022 Pittsburgh Pirates Summary Stats Schedule Player Usage Depth Chart The depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. So the question is, was there actual improvement in his ability or is this just noise in the signal? Hes now 23 but could still be a fifth outfielder. His 2022 was not as remarkable from a walk and strikeout standpoint but it was still good, as he hit .270/.376/.418 with 38 extra-base hits (pretty good for the Florida State League) and 33 steals at Low-A Bradenton. His delivery is violent and scary, especially given the injury track record, though not all of his injuries in the past have been to his arm. For the second straight year, he allowed a high rate of home runs, which inflated his ERA. He absolutely towers over his father, who was twice a Baseball America Top 100 prospect but spent most of his pro career in Japan. Blanco is a gigantic corner outfield/1B prospect who had the most present raw power in the January 2022 international signing class. In the past, Ortizs high-effort delivery and sub-optimal fastball shape put him on the starter/reliever line, but hes thrown plenty of strikes across multiple seasons while simultaneously developing more velocity and comfortably projects as a starting pitcher now. Hernandez sat 93-96 mph in 2021 and when seen prior to Dodgers list publication last season, then kept throwing harder throughout the summer and ended up averaging 95-97 and touching 101 while with Double-A Tulsa. Andrew McCutchen / OF 3. He projects as a quick-moving no. He was throwing as hard as ever when he returned but still got shelled, and was quite wild at Double-A before he was sent to Arizona to audition to keep his 40-man spot with Kansas City. The power might be enough to make him a 1-WAR player if given regular at-bats in the big leagues, but as a second base-only defender, its hard to find an on-roster role for a player like this if they arent hitting enough to play there all the time. Pittsburgh Pirates Top 43 Prospects by Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin February 9, 2023 Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports Top Prospects Team Lists 2023 2022 AL NL Below is an analysis. In 2022, it garnered just 8% whiffs and 13% chase during his time at Double-A, where he spent most of the season. as compiled by Ben Clemens and the FanGraphs staff. Currently, Kennedys best attribute is multi-faceted fastball utility. His maxed-out frame is cumbersome on the infield, but his footwork at first base has improved a ton since he started playing there, and weve updated our previous DH-only projection. by Retrosheet. Whats more, theres a chance Triolo hits enough to simply be an everyday option at second (or if he turns out to be okay in center). His overall pitch recognition, especially against breaking balls, has become a more noticeable issue. As FanGraphs sourced TrackMan/Hawkeye data from team personnel after the season, De Los Santos hard hit rate and peak exit velocities stood apart from most of his peers, especially when limiting the sample to the DSLs age-appropriate players. Middle infielder Termarr Johnson, who the Pittsburgh. He has the strength to do damage the other way, but save for the occasional pitch on the outer edge, hes geared to pull. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every teams list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. Now 24 and neither protected from nor claimed during the 2022 Rule 5 draft, its imperative for him to start throwing strikes more consistently in order to find his way to a big league bullpen. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. Both can be in the lineup every night because of Rodriguezs defensive versatility and the universal DH, and a more liberal timeshare behind the plate might help keep them both healthier and more consistently productive on offense. That makes changeup development, or anything that might help him deal with righties, important, and indeed thats already underway Solometo has begun to more heavily incorporate a mid-80s changeup into his pitch mix. Pittsburgh Pirates Top 43 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball Not Quite Enough Hit Tool After the season, he again played winter ball, this time in Puerto Rico with Carolina, where Cheng struggled. Triolos swing and footwork in the box make him vulnerable in a couple of obvious ways (high heat, sliders away), and we dont think the 60-grade hit, 45-grade power profile that he has put on paper so far will hold quite that much water against big league arms. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. LSU played . His curveball was his only secondary to induce an above-average chase rate. On defense, Rodriguezs size is both a feature and a bug. From a heuristics standpoint, you cant do much better than Rodriguezs profile. Quants and front office analyst types are more bearish, citing issues with Priesters fastball playability. Hes a fun one cause he had 20 grade defense apparently but scored positive defensively and 30 grade speed but ran nearly 29 feet/second. While hes played a bunch of shortstop, he is much more likely to wind up on the edge of 3B/1B than he is to see middle infield time at maturity. His breaking ball is his best pitch and he could be a lefty relief piece. As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. If you split his season exactly in half, the improvement is obvious. Eddy Yean, RHP RotoGraphs. Let's Identify Some Hitter Sleeper Candidates | FanGraphs Baseball Here's a link to the Top 25.. Link to the Top 50.. Link to the Top 75.. He showed a tendency to expand the zone and make some sub-optimal contact as an amateur and in his 2022 pro sample, but there are times when Johnson does this and rather than frustrate scouts and analysts, he impresses them with his ability to identify and adjust to breaking balls, his barrel feel, and his hand-eye coordination. In some ways, this makes aspects of De Los Santos data even more impressive, because hes turning around soft DSL pitching with ridiculous pace. From that point on, however, Triolo walked more and struck out less, such that both rates sat in the mid-teens, while flipping the slugging switch on to the tune of 13 doubles, five triples, and eight home runs over the course of the same number of games. Grant Hartwig is one of the most promising under-the-radar prospects in the New York Mets system. March 3, 2023. He practically straddles the plate and was hit by 20 pitches during an injury-shortened regular season, then was somehow beaned seven more times in just 17 Arizona Fall League games. Many scouts are champing at the bit over Priesters prototypical frame and four- or five-pitch mix, depending on whether you consider his fastballs two distinct pitches. Nicolas spent most of his college career in the bullpen, but hes held up well as a starter in pro ball, developing two distinct breaking balls that hes using much more than he did at Ball State. Hernandez, also 19, sat 93-96 in 2022 and has a good-looking two-planed slider, but a relief-only delivery and a mature build. Out over the plate, he has a tendency to stay inside fastballs and lift them toward the opposite field gap. Chen began his career with 26 consecutive walk-free innings in the 2021 Florida Complex League, then spent all of 2022 at Bradenton, where he had a solid second pro season, carrying a 3.76 FIP across 98 innings. Jerez has above-average power and a 70 arm. When Smith-Njigba takes a comfortable, max-effort hack, its obvious that he has big power, and his exit velo data reinforces the visual evaluation. While he was already throwing quite hard, Ortiz came into even more velocity in 2022 and averaged 97 mph on his fastball, up two ticks from 2021. RT @NorthShoreNine: wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs Pirates Top Prospect List You found it controversial, so we discussed it Subscribe & Listen . Its going to be fascinating to watch him develop, and if it doesnt work, hell probably still be a viable reliever. Even though both Davis and Rodriguez are near-ready catching prospects, they arent redundant, and in fact they complement each other well. Swaggerty matched the nine home runs he posted in 2019, but this time, he did so against better pitching, in fewer at-bats, and in a much less hitter-friendly park, and he improved on his walk rate by a couple of ticks. He hit his stride in mid-August with back-to-back scoreless starts in which his four-seamer averaged over 96 across a combined nine innings a high water mark for the season and a true glimpse of his upside. His four-seamer was around the same velo as it had been at the alt site, sitting comfortably at 93 mph and maxing out at 95. Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports. RotoGraphs. Plaz had a cartoonish line in the DSL (he slugged over .700), but hes very burly and physically mature for a 17-year-old, so wed like to see him do it stateside. Mason Martin, 1B A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. That pitch plays up against lefties for reasons that are probably obvious, but it isnt a nasty pitch in a vacuum. Solometo certainly has superficial frame-based projection, but his athleticism and explosiveness are comfortably below whats typical of someone who finds more and more velocity deep into their 20s. Last year, Fraizers 2021 performance at Greensboro (which included 20 homers) convinced us that he had a chance to be a big deal, but his plate discipline was a big problem against Double-A pitching. He will be an unmistakable fixture on Pittsburghs backfields for the next couple of years and is a power-hitting corner prospect of extreme variance. Its not a great look to lose half a minor league rosters worth of players in the Rule 5, but that whole group might produce one or two big league role players, which is a small price to pay if theyre byprospects of a bigger group from which the Pirates can pick and choose before exposing the rest to that arcane process. 76. Ryan Vilade, LF The depth-drive approach has extended to the amateur side of things, where the Pirates tend to spread out their bonus pool to at least a couple of over-slot prospects every year. Matt Fraizer, CF His slot also helps generate two-plane sweep on his breaking ball. 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