On the showcase circuit, he was less whiff-prone than is typical for a multi-sport guy from the Northeast, though he was a pull-only hitter and struggled to contact fastballs in the upper/outer quadrant of the zone. Alessandro Ercolani, RHP While prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . Hes been able to maintain nearly average contact rates despite a pull-heavy approach to contact. He has the strength to do damage the other way, but save for the occasional pitch on the outer edge, hes geared to pull. As a wrap-up, the Pirates have. Defensively, he has mostly played second base so far in his professional career, with just a handful of starts at short. feels like the more realistic path to an eventual 45-grade role, or above. Pirates Draft Prospect Watch: Big Weekend for LSU's Dylan Crews With Endy Rodriguez around, it may not matter a ton. 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. The Pittsburgh Pirates are hiring. The Pirates snagged him in Decembers Rule 5 draft, making him only the second lefty reliever on their 40-man, so hell likely be called upon for consistent use out of the big league pen in 2023. Endy had an incredible 2022 statline .323/.407/.590 most of which was generated at hitter-friendly Greensboro. FanGraphs Prospects. Tony Sanchez / C 6. Hudson Head, CF Theres an All-Star-caliber hit and power combination here, and while a bigger pro data sample might reveal some approach-related issues, Johnson has been one of the best hitters his age for going on a half decade and feels like a relatively high-probability high school hitting prospect. They all received. After the season, he again played winter ball, this time in Puerto Rico with Carolina, where Cheng struggled. His player page shows him above average in UZR/150, OAA and RAA (although only 1 in each of the latter two). Cheng entered 2022 coming off an incredible season in which he slashed .311/.449/.492 with twice as many walks as he had strikeouts. Johnson was a well-regarded prospect basically as soon as he reached high school, and there were scouts who were so excited when they first watched him hit that they considered him a future top 5-10 pick when he was only a freshman. He projects as a quick-moving no. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Thats hard enough to do for any batter, let alone one whose schedule also includes the grueling demands of pitching development. His delivery has a relief-only look to it. 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. His swing is quite uphill from the left side and he can tend to swing underneath fastballs up and away from him, but overall he is very difficult to make whiff inside the strike zone despite his steep-launch style of contact. His delivery also creates an odd angle on a mid-80s cutter/slider, which Solometo commands to his glove side. Climbing the minor league ladder often comes with offensive slumps, many of which are cured as hitters accrue at-bats at the more advanced level. Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Updated FanGraph Rankings Campana, soon to be 21, is the youngest of this group. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. Looking forward to fangraphs being wrong Campman92 5 min. 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. When healthy, he was a hard-throwing 40 FV reliever. His curveball was his only secondary to induce an above-average chase rate. Pittsburgh Pirates: FanGraphs Add 2021 Draft Picks to Prospect Board 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. Some of his early-career success seems to have stemmed from his physical maturity. 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. 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. He also has a promising sweeper slider, but he lacks typical physical projection for a teenage pitcher. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. Escotto, 20, was a 40+ FV prospect after his huge DSL season and later became part of the Jameson Taillon trade, but he struggled very badly in 2022 and needed to be demoted back to Low-A. Mets Prospect Grant Hartwig Has an Unusual Background and an East-West If his defense continues to look like it did in the 2022-23 Dominican Winter League during 2023 spring training, he may quickly be repositioned on this list. 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. Gorski had a nutty statline at Greensboro and indeed has plus raw power, but its tough to project a real role for a 25-year-old who struck out as much as he did at High- and Double-A. 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. Besides Johnson and Harrington, two other 2022 draft picks made the top 30. Pathways toward a more impactful role are most likely to be carved by Harringtons command outperforming this projection. Top Prospects Team Lists 2022 2021 AL NL Pirates Top Prospects Reading Options Detail Level Data Only Full Position Filter All 60 FV Prospects 1. 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. 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%. Pittsburgh Pirates 2021 Top 50 Prospects January 1, 2021 Kyle Brown General, MiLB, NL Central, Pirates, Top 50 Lists 2 Graphic design by John Stewart, @jonance on Twitter The Pirates had a woeful time in 2020 once the season got going. brewers top prospects fangraphs 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. His mother spent her childhood in London, while his father "a real Brit; he still has an . If he moves to first base, this will become especially scary. Ricky Tiedemann is one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in the game. How impactful a starter may depend on how his changeup, currently a tertiary offering, develops at the big league level. Garcia is only 19 but is already sitting 96. These rankings are now available on The Board on the 2023 Fantasy Rankings tab, where you can also see the Top 120 Dynasty Rankings!. Instead, Triolo looks like hell be a superutility guy. The clubs hit rate on these trades per prospect isnt great, but the hit rate per trade has been better than that because of their risk-mitigating approach. His arm action looks longer and looser than it was in his injury-shortened 2021, and his upper body appears more closed, which might be helping him hide the ball longer than before. A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. 1/ . 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. Traded from Miami during the 2021-22 offseason as part of the three-player package for Jacob Stallings, Nicolas spent 2022 with Altoona, where he worked 90 innings with a FIP and ERA close to 4.00. He is a 6-foot-5 20-year-old, after all. The pitch has natural tailing action, but Ortiz can also blow it past hitters at the letters when he wants, and his TrackMan data shows hes mixing in four- and two-seamers in the locations where theyre most effective. Both feel like high-floored backend or long relief types who need to walk an atypical path to an impact role. 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. It could stand to have more consistent depth, but the flashes are there, and remember that Kennedy is barely 18. His defensive versatility will allow the Pirates to play in-game matchups that take advantage of Baes speed and ability to put balls in play. Pittsburgh Pirates: Top 10 Players Under Age 26 (as of 4/1/11) 1. 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. Carter Bins, C Pirates Top Prospects | MLB.com 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. Vilade spent some time near the top of the Rockies list due to his feel for contact. The husky Nunez swings really hard and generates big peak exit velocities. 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. They have Hunter. The Pirates have three of those 38 players, with Termarr Johnson ranked 21st, Endy Rodriguez 22nd and Henry Davis 38th. 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. Johnson often ends his swing with his torso having made a full 180 degree rotation, sometimes swinging with such ferocious bat speed that he loses his balance and faceplants in the batters box. Most of his swings and misses over the last few years have been on fastballs running away from him, but in 2022, he displayed a more advanced ability to poke the barrel at balls on the outer edge of the plate, extending his short levers in an effort to slap outside pitches the other way. Enmanuel Terrero, OF He has now struck out nearly 30% of the time during each of the last two seasons, but hes still performed comfortably above the league average at each stop because of the quality of the contact he does make. From 2017-21, Webbs strikeout rate more than doubled as a result of his uptick in arm strength. 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. . Jackson Glenn, 2B. That's nearly 30% of all their picks coming up as noteworthy prospects. He barely played in 2022 due to hamstring, elbow, and hip flexor injuries that cost him all but a couple of games. He absolutely towers over his father, who was twice a Baseball America Top 100 prospect but spent most of his pro career in Japan. Meanwhile, Chandlers post-promotion production at the plate plummeted to a sub-.200 batting average and an OPS of just .574, thanks largely to a strikeout rate just barely south of 40%; he launched just a single dinger in his 32 Low-A games compared to three in his 14 games on the complex. That creates backspin and carry on his fastball and big depth on his curve. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. He commands it consistently enough to his glove side to project as a starter. He could get a cup of coffee in 2023. But Jones athleticism and physical strength drove confidence that he could maintain plus fastball velocity across a starters workload in pro ball (which so far has been true), and his natural breaking ball bite gave him at least one likely plus pitch to go with it. On defense, Rodriguezs size is both a feature and a bug. FanGraphs Top 43 Pirates prospects : r/buccos - reddit.com Connor Scott, RF Shim is a big, physically mature righty with huge present arm strength, creeping into the upper 90s. The depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. His fastball velocity is down, in the 92-94 mph range, a far cry from Priesters upper-90s peak. 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. Pittsburgh Pirates Top 43 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball Neil Walker / 2B 5. Bins is athletic for a catcher and has a good arm, but his receiving and contact skills are both 30s. in the minor league phase of the 2022 Rule 5 Draft. DeVito brandishes a five-pitch arsenal headlined by a filthy splitter, but he struggled to locate any of his pitches well enough for them to really complement each other. Still, his strikeouts come primarily on in-zone swing-and-miss, so its important for the strike-throwing to improve for him to capitalize on his ability to overpower hitters as he continues to advance. Amid a couple of short IL stints in 2022, Selby put up impressive numbers split between Double- and Triple-A and then looked great in the Arizona Fall League. These rankings include six Pittsburgh Pirates prospects cracking the FanGraph top 100. His chase rates were at or below league average across the board, further emphasizing the troubling command. On Friday, FanGraphs released updated rankings. In cases like these, sometimes the things that initially pique your interest, like data and/or available video, are enough to excite on their own even as you acknowledge that the error bars are as wide as can be because of the relative dearth of reinforcing club opinions. Not Quite Enough Hit Tool It should be noted that DeVitos development has been plagued by stops and starts caused first by the pandemic and then by an ulnar nerve issue that shortened his 2021 season. Injured Arms Atlanta Braves Stats | FanGraphs Baseball Burrows had success as a starter throughout a 2022 season split between Double- and Triple-A before shoulder inflammation effectively ended his season. After bouncing around many websites covering hockey, he . Hes now a career .303/.394/.533 hitter and has had meaningful statistical success up through Double-A, where he spent about a month toward the end of 2022. He would slot among Priester and Ortiz on this list had he completed a totally healthy 2022. His arm action is very long, and he bends at his torso as he lunges toward the plate, allowing for more extension during his release, but also creating an uncomfy angle that adds stress to his shoulder. Jameson Taillon / SP 4. 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. Could Solometo eventually throw harder? 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. He also mixes in the occasional changeup or curveball, which accounted for a combined 11% of his offerings at Low-A. Drafted 91st overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021 out of a Huntington Beach junior college, the 20-year-old southpaw not only finished last season in Double-A, he dominated at all three levels where he saw action. Drew Maggi looks to make Majors with Pirates - mlb.com Quants and front office analyst types are more bearish, citing issues with Priesters fastball playability. Harry Ford is one of the top prospects in the Seattle Mariners organization, and he is also unique among his peers. Blanco is a gigantic corner outfield/1B prospect who had the most present raw power in the January 2022 international signing class. His slider has a sweeping horizontal shape, but his inability to locate it has hampered its utility. 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. 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. White was seen early and often as an underclassman since he went to a Philadelphia high school with University of Virginia outfielder Chris Newell, and would frequently match up against the Siani brothers during varsity play. Solometo was a very high-profile amateur pitcher, drafted in the second round but given a bonus commensurate with the 24th overall pick ($2.8 million) as one of several exciting high schoolers who Pittsburgh landed with the pool space freed up by Henry Davis under slot agreement. 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. 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. His swing may look different in 2023 and prompt a re-evaluation. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, As a right-handed hitter almost all of Endys damage is done on outer-third pitches that he can get fully extended against. 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. This is one of those prospects fantasy players should value more highly than this because of his potential home run output, whereas defensive limitations cause us to value his real-world roster fit in this range. Scott, Siani, and Campana all have big physical tools and have all struggled badly from a bat-to-ball standpoint. He was passed over in the 2022 Rule 5 Draft despite his stuff quality because hes so raw as a strike-thrower. Theyre finding them. Cubs pitching prospect Hayden Wesneski is proving he belongs in his latest Spring Training outing. Jimenez has a very good sweeping, upper-70s curveball and creates plus action on a changeup that he sells with fantastic arm speed. Chandlers pitching performance wasnt as lights-out as it had been pre-promotion, but it was still a display of the rightys potential. It had exploded even further when he was seen following the pandemic shutdown, as he sat 95-97 mph and was touching 101 during the 2021 regular season. In April and May, he posted a strikeout rate of 15.9% and a walk rate of 14.5%; from June to September, he improved those marks to 28.5% and 6.9%, respectively. 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. Prospect Report: Diamondbacks 2023 Imminent Big Leaguers RotoWire News: Gonzales will join the Pirates' major-league camp this spring. Nicolas has consistent glove-side command of his entire repertoire, and he tends to live on that half of the plate exclusively. Theres still some prospect clout here because of Nolascos power and long-haul physicality, but at this stage, he should be considered more of power-driven flier than a likely big leaguer. The Royals designated Webb for assignment in mid-November and he elected free agency before signing with the Pirates. His changeup is deceptive against batters in both boxes, but in particular against righties, who have a 40% chase rate on the offering. He has a wide arsenal, including a changeup and a two-seamer, but tends to rely more heavily on pairing his riding fastball and curveball to keep hitters off balance. Massey, going on 23, is a very loose, projectable college prospect from Minnesota. Born Harrison Michael Ford, in Atlanta, 20 years ago this week, the right-handed-hitting catcher is the son of English immigrants. 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. He maintained his patient approach in Altoona, and when the Double-A season ended, he was sent up to Indianapolis for the last five games of the Triple-A season. Johnsons swing bears some mechanical resemblance to Bryce Harpers, especially its lower half usage and finish. Prospects Coverage | FanGraphs Baseball In addition to sending Bradley back to Boston, the Milwaukee Brewers are also sending two of their top-30 prospects. Still tracking like a high-probability backup catcher, Gutierrez set a career-high in homers in 2022 amid an uptick in strikeouts that his underlying data (just a 10% swinging strike rate) indicates will bounce back to career norms. on Twitter: "wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs 76. Chen was the 22nd-ranked player on the 2019 International Player section of The Board and was generally seen as the best signable high school prospect in Taiwan. His footwork on throws to second is clunky and variable, which often impacts his throw times and accuracy, but the pure arm strength is in there. 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). Flowers velocity has never really popped in a big way despite some of the late projection because of his conversion. Even if sliders are a chronic issue for Davis, hell likely still get to enough power to produce better than the average everyday catcher. Still, the teenage pitcher demo is bust-prone and, anecdotally, this seems especially true when the prospect in question already throws really hard at age 17 or 18. 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). His turn at the 2022 Futures Game gave viewers a glimpse of his heater/curveball combo, showcasing the carry on his mid-90s fastball in contrast to the vertical depth of the high-spin (2,800 rpm) curve. Big league sliders might force Davis to make an adjustment, but so far his contact performance has been solidly average. Andres Silvera, RHP. His letter-high, heater-heavy style of pitching, like Gerrit Coles, results in lots of fly balls and he may have long-term vulnerability to the home run. Let's Identify Some Hitter Sleeper Candidates | FanGraphs Baseball Like his other stuff, his feel for location is better than the movement hes creating on the pitch. He can already land his breaker in the zone and its angle should help it become a viable back-foot offering to righties. 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. Hunter Stratton, RHP Cubs prospect Hayden Wesneski proving he belongs in the big leagues He appears tentative on routine throws and still isnt a sure-handed defender. While it may seem like a lot of time has passed since he put his name on the prospect map with his otherworldly 2018 DSL performance, Nunez is still very young; hell turn 22 during spring training, where hes a non-roster invitee. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. Juan Jerez, 3B FanGraphs Baseball | Baseball Statistics and Analysis Diego Cartaya (37) - Catcher Cartaya is listed a little higher in The. Barco is a low-slot lefty with advanced command and several underlying pitch traits that give clubs hope of more upside even though he looks like a lower-variance backend starter prospect on the surface. His carrying tool is still his defense, especially his receiving, which is crafty and advanced. Dodgers: FanGraphs Lists Four LA Prospects on Top 100 List In 2022, it garnered just 8% whiffs and 13% chase during his time at Double-A, where he spent most of the season. Hunter Stanley - Game Logs - Pitching | FanGraphs Baseball
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