Its a pretty big lost year of reps for a multi-sport player looking to get traction with the bat in pro ball. It plays nicely with Flowers plus slider, and he has enough changeup feel to parachute one in against lefties once in a while. But as Triolos pro success with the bat continued at a high level, and with KeBryan Hayes manning the hot corner for the Pirates foreseeable future, the Pirates began searching for defensive alternatives in order to plug Triolo into their lineup. Hes a young, switch-hitting catcher with cartoonish offensive numbers (especially from a bat-to-ball standpoint) and uncommon defensive versatility, as hes played a bunch of second base and left field as well. So compact and short to the baseball is Rodriguez that he can wait an extra beat to diagnose pitch types, which enables him to make in-flight adjustments to breaking balls, spoil the well-located ones, and crush the hangers. March 3, 2023. 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 has the talent to be an everyday player, but has to improve in one or two key areas (throwing accuracy, slider recognition) for that to be his outcome. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Barcos long, low arm slot creates a flat approach angle, but hes not really inclined to climb the ladder and pitch at the top of the zone right now, instead living on the arm-side third of the plate with sink and tail. Malone, a former first round high schooler who was part of the Starling Marte trade with Arizona, has barely pitched since he was acquired, and dealt with shoulder injuries in 2022. Campana, soon to be 21, is the youngest of this group. That pitch plays up against lefties for reasons that are probably obvious, but it isnt a nasty pitch in a vacuum. He appears tentative on routine throws and still isnt a sure-handed defender. Pathways toward a more impactful role are most likely to be carved by Harringtons command outperforming this projection. He mixed in four pitches, with his four-seamer and slider accounting for 88% of his pitches, and the changeup and two-seamer bringing up the rear. His range, footwork, ability to bend, and overall athleticism are all plus, and it made sense to try to develop him as a shortstop for as long as possible, but Peguero finally saw time at second base in 2022 and a permanent move there will hopefully help him throw more confidently and accurately. Enmanuel Terrero, OF He clearly wasnt comfortable in center field during his brief time there last season, but he only played there once every couple of weeks and he isnt a firm no at the position, even if he is bad there right now. Not Quite Enough Hit Tool Hes poised for a big league bullpen role this season and has a repertoire thats deep and nasty enough that he should be considered a late-inning option. This impressive performance inspired his offseason 40-man addition. You can see the power and athleticism in Davis lower half throughout other aspects of his game, and its an indication that he has the ability to polish this stuff up and control the running game. Johnsons swing bears some mechanical resemblance to Bryce Harpers, especially its lower half usage and finish. His slow, mid-70s curveball is easy to identify out of his hand, but it has lovely shape and depth of break, so perhaps it can be sculpted into a more traditional big league breaking ball. 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. If you split his season exactly in half, the improvement is obvious. document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { To that point in the season, his mid-teens walk rate had inspired guarded optimism regarding an improved approach, though Nunez also may have become intentionally passive, as his raw swing% was a minuscule 40%. Davis was on the IL multiple times in 2022 with issues stemming from a small nondisplaced fracture of his left wrist that he suffered when he was hit by a pitch in May. As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. Poised to compete for a rotation spot when 2023 camp breaks, Ortiz is one of a few high-upside Pirates youngsters who look like theyd fit in a contenders rotation. Triolo has long been viewed as a glove-first third baseman whod likely have some big league utility, similar to D-backs third baseman Emmanuel Rivera. Might the changeup develop over time into a plus pitch? Endy had an incredible 2022 statline .323/.407/.590 most of which was generated at hitter-friendly Greensboro. . When healthy, he was a hard-throwing 40 FV reliever. Lopez swings exceptionally hard and makes some mechanical compromises to do so, but not in a way that has impacted his performance yet. Ercolani, an 18-year-old righty from San Marino, had a velo spike during the winter and has been up to 97 mph in the bullpen recently. His delivery evokes Madison Bumgarners long, slingin lefty arm stroke, and Solometos east/west feel for location is Bum-ish, but dont mistake this for a true comp, as Bumgarner had already made 24 big league starts at Solometos age. His overall pitch recognition, especially against breaking balls, has become a more noticeable issue. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. There were only three big league hitters with 100 plate appearances who had sub-70% in-zone contact rates in 2022 (Chris Morel, Brett Phillips, Eli White). He finished 2022 at Altoona and has a chance to be in the big leagues at some point this season. He ultimately went fourth overall to Pittsburgh, and because hes a relatively advanced hitter with a mature build, theres a good chance the Pirates move Johnson through the minors pretty quickly if he hits the ground running offensively. His chase rates were at or below league average across the board, further emphasizing the troubling command. Across his 94.1 innings, he racked up 111 strikeouts against just 31 walks, with a 1.21 WHIP. Either way, he played over half the season in the outfield and was roughly average, which is much better than I would have expected after the reporting on him previously called him a positionless defender. The type of contact he makes is unlikely to ever lead to home run power commensurate with a true everyday player, but Bae makes enough stinging, all-fields contact that he projects to hit plenty of doubles and triples. Flowers velocity has never really popped in a big way despite some of the late projection because of his conversion. Hes going to be a star if he ends up with even average raw power, and even if he doesnt, were talking about a switch-hitting catcher who can make an impact on both offense and defense. His player page shows him above average in UZR/150, OAA and RAA (although only 1 in each of the latter two). Those risks apply here. While he has a low three-quarters slot that creates natural tail on his heater, Kennedy can still create riding life at the letters. It shows above-average arm-side action on occasion, but hes only throwing it 12% of the time. 4/5 on a contender. Pirates 2B Termarr Johnson | 18 | A | 2025. A draft-eligible sophomore in 2022, Harrington is an athletic, pitchability righty with a tailing low-90s fastball and a power-sink changeup in the mid-80s. His feel for throwing strikes would come and go, and hes only 6-feet-1, a little smaller than the prep pitching prototypes who you often see getting $2 million or more in the draft. Webb dealt with a forearm strain that delayed the start of his 2022 season. It felt like the Pirates were slow-playing him a little too much after the pandemic (Nolasco was easily physical enough to go to Low-A in 2021), but perhaps they simply knew he wasnt ready to parse full-season pitching. Big league sliders might force Davis to make an adjustment, but so far his contact performance has been solidly average. Even if sliders are a chronic issue for Davis, hell likely still get to enough power to produce better than the average everyday catcher. 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. Alessandro Ercolani, RHP The Royals designated Webb for assignment in mid-November and he elected free agency before signing with the Pirates. He also threw a smattering of changeups in 2022, though it amounted to fewer than a dozen across his 50.2 innings of work at Double-A, and the changeup didnt show up at all when the Bahamian took the mound for Great Britains WBC squad. M.J. Melendezs 2019 and Bo Naylors 2020 are recent examples of otherwise good-hitting catchers who had a terrible offensive season in the mid-minors that was followed by an immediate and significant rebound the following year. 2023 600 PA / 200 IP Projections Steamer600. Hes naturally adept at framing low strikes because hes already so low to the ground, but its also fair to wonder if such a small athlete can withstand the grind of catching 80-100 games every summer. Gonzales hands work in a short, explosive loop. Gonzales has begun to track like Keston Hiura, Carter Kieboom, and Jeter Downs, and his swing shares mechanical similarities with both Hiura and Kieboom. John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. He pairs it with two above-average secondaries: a high-80s slider with sharp, downward movement that garnered a 48% chase rate against righties, and an 11-5 curveball with a shape that mimics the slider, only slower and looser, which helps keep batters off balance and enables him to pitch backwards. }); Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category. Neither his slider nor changeup is fully baked quite yet, but if either (or both) become viable, they would bring with them a higher probability that Priester slots in as a mid-rotation starter. by Handedness, 25th on the Pirates list at the end of 2022, Effectively Wild Episode 1966: Joe West, Young Man, Ben Cherington on Pittsburghs Two Top Prospects. Pegueros pull-heavy style of contact leaves him vulnerable to breaking balls on the outer half, even ones that catch a lot of the plate. Scouting reports were. Selbys fastball sits 96-98 mph and he looks to blow it past hitters up in the zone. Hayden Wesneski is a 25-year-old starting pitcher in the Chicago Cubs system. Hard-Throwers While especially adept at launching pitches on the inner third, Johnson also shows some ability to shorten up and cover the top and outer edge of the strike zone. It could stand to have more consistent depth, but the flashes are there, and remember that Kennedy is barely 18. Both feel like high-floored backend or long relief types who need to walk an atypical path to an impact role. In some ways, this makes aspects of De Los Santos data even more impressive, because hes turning around soft DSL pitching with ridiculous pace. For the second straight year, he allowed a high rate of home runs, which inflated his ERA. He has the stuff to continue developing as a starter just in case things click, but the bullpen is Jimenezs more likely future destination. Pedro Alvarez / 3B 2. The site listed four Dodgers prospects on their list. Burrows had success as a starter throughout a 2022 season split between Double- and Triple-A before shoulder inflammation effectively ended his season. Be warned that he may hit for huge power at Greensboro in 2023, but the key thing to watch is his strikeout rate. That fact isn't apparent on his Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs pages, but for about 48 hours, Maggi, who homered to break up the Yankees' shutout bid in the ninth inning of the Pirates' 9-1 split-squad loss on Thursday, enjoyed life in the Majors. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. After spending most of the year at Triple-A, where he hit .289/.362/.430, Bae spent the last couple weeks of the 2022 season as an everyday member of the big league club, where he seems likely to stick throughout the coming season as a lefty-hitting 2B/OF. The average draft position (ADP) included is from Draft Champions leagues from January 19 to February 19 at the NFBC, which you can find here.These leagues draft 50 players and that's all they get for the year no pickups or drops. Pirates Reds: NL West. He also mixes in the occasional changeup or curveball, which accounted for a combined 11% of his offerings at Low-A. 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. Priesters four-seamer is divisive. Lopez is a huge-framed infielder who hit .286/.329/.476 and launched 19 homers in just 106 games as a 20-year-old at hitter-friendly Greensboro in 2022. Despite all of that, Priester took a hit in a lot of the national prospect outlets, dropping off quite a few Top 100 lists. This time around, the Top 100 has even more Moreno types, prospects who combine . Cristofer Melendez, RHP Pro teams are more open to east/west fastball operation and the Pirates might be able to coax more sweep out of Harringtons slider, though Campbell does a pretty good job developing pitchers, so there may be less developmental meat on the bone here than youd guess considering hes coming from a smaller program. He fills out the bottom half of the zone with his slider, itself an impressive bat-misser, thanks again to Dombkowskis command. He showed a velo spike (92-96) at the onset of the 2022 college season before his arm strength and command regressed. Spending all season at Triple-A, he put up decent numbers, striking out roughly a quarter of opposing batters and allowing just four homers all season. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. For now, hes lithe enough for third, where he has a shot to be an everyday player based largely on his power projection. RotoWire News: Gonzales will join the Pirates' major-league camp this spring. Scouting. Hes already taken a sizable step in the breaking ball department in just two pros seasons. While likely of low impact, Solometos feel to pitch will almost certainly enable him to be a big leaguer of some kind, either a backend starter or long reliever. Quants and front office analyst types are more bearish, citing issues with Priesters fastball playability. Thats something to watch as Jones continues to progress through the minors. 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. It comes out of his hand from a high arm slot that looks like the kind optimized for data-friendly ride, but the pitchs downhill angle makes it less of a weapon at the letters and actually makes it very vulnerable within the strike zone. RotoGraphs. Samaniego looks like a typical second lefty out of a bullpen, sitting 92-94 mph with a deceptive, whippy arm action, and locating his fastball with precision on the arm-side part of the plate. In some respects, its easy to assess DSL players. 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. Every once in a while he will show you the power, and hes very good at hitting pitches out away from him to the opposite field with authority, but you can get him out if you can execute location against Gonzales, and big league pitchers often do. He walked more than a batter per inning in 2022. His on-mound athleticism enables plus long-term command projection, though for right now Harrington really only locates his fastball to his arm side. Given their respective shapes, its easy to see how those pitches play off of one another, and they were the reason Burrows presented a traditional relief look prior to his changeups development. The high-waisted Lopez has a wide range of athletic/mobility outcomes that will impact where he ultimately ends up on defense. 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. FanGraphs Prospects. 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. Hunter Stratton, RHP Spotty command and limited fastball utility push Mlodzinski into a multi-inning relief role. Hes been able to maintain nearly average contact rates despite a pull-heavy approach to contact. Top 51 Prospects: Pittsburgh Pirates by Eric Longenhagen February 24, 2021 Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Chandler started the 2022 season on the complex, where he showed two-way promise, slashing .231/.444/.654 over 36 plate appearances while annihilating opposing batters, issuing 27 strikeouts and giving up just three hits without allowing a run over 15.1 innings. Theyve tripled since his claim-staking 2019 DSL season and Nolsaco Kd at a whopping 34% rate in the 2022 Florida State League. Grant Hartwig is one of the most promising under-the-radar prospects in the New York Mets system. 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.