For instance, hes struggled badly on defense, wracking up 46 errors combined the last two seasons. 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. But he was then shut down and had TJ, which ended his season early enough that he could be back in 2023. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, From the left side of the plate, Rodriguez has an exceptional ability to rip his hands through pitches on the inner edge of the zone. Chen is a very advanced righty with a deep repertoire led by his plus changeup. 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. }); Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category. DeVito is a bird of a feather that has flocked together in the Pirates system: a promising arm with in-zone swing-and-miss, but one whose unsteady command has prevented him from capitalizing on that whiff rate. The top of this draft class right now is LSU outfielder Dylan Crews, who had a big weekend. Uribe, 20, is a projectable lefty with a 92-93 mph fastball and high-spin breaking ball. 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. While prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Pedro Alvarez / 3B 2. Hes now 23 but could still be a fifth outfielder. But the improvement on his slider means he could solidify a role as a middle reliever, especially if the converted infielder is able to re-establish the fastball velos he flirted with a few years ago. He walked more than a batter per inning in 2022. 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. 4/5 starter. Drafted as a shortstop, he fell down the defensive spectrum pretty quickly but without finding a way to lift the ball and hit for power in games. Not counting his time at the alt site in 2020, last season was Boltons first time back in competitive action since 2019. Hes been able to maintain nearly average contact rates despite a pull-heavy approach to contact. As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. Head, who was part of the Joe Musgrove trade, has Kd at a 33% clip in A-ball and might also be in the midst of a swing change that gets rid of his arm bar. in the minor league phase of the 2022 Rule 5 Draft. 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. Its possible Flowers strike-throwing consistency will make a big league manager feel secure going to him with consistency in the middle innings, but on stuff he projects more as a near-ready up/down reliever. FanGraphs Top 43 Pirates prospects blogs.fangraphs Vote 3 comments Best Add a Comment Robert_roberts82 14 min. 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. 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. He has the stuff to continue developing as a starter just in case things click, but the bullpen is Jimenezs more likely future destination. Defensively, Nunez has transitioned from full-time third baseman to mostly first base, with a handful of innings in the other corner of the infield still mixed in. He threw it 16% of the time (up from 9% the previous season) and induced a 53% whiff rate with this power-action, mid-80s change. 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. Davis plate crowding helps enable his pull-heavy approach. Here are the Pirates' 2023 Top 30 prospects March 1, 2023 Pirates' Chandler going all in on pitching February 28, 2023 Pirates return No. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. Thats the situation were projecting here. A fresh start with a new org (he was a waiver claim this offseason) might help him find a swing that produces more power. 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. As a right-handed hitter almost all of Endys damage is done on outer-third pitches that he can get fully extended against. Short but not small, his lack of length and size is actually an advantage for Johnsons swing, as he can enjoy a bat path geared for power and lift without it being too long. Even though both Davis and Rodriguez are near-ready catching prospects, they arent redundant, and in fact they complement each other well. Chandlers pitching performance wasnt as lights-out as it had been pre-promotion, but it was still a display of the rightys potential. They have Hunter. He sits in the upper 80s right now but has promising underlying traits and plenty of time to develop. 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). 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. 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. Oliver Mateo, RHP feels like the more realistic path to an eventual 45-grade role, or above. He has an interesting long-term body projection and breaking ball combination. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. His quality of contact is very good when he does make it, and is already on par with the typical starting major league second baseman even though hes barely 22. Opinions around Shim vary because he offers less physical projection than is typical in the international talent space, even for an older pitcher. The Pirates got a deal done for a cool million, nearly twice the slot amount in the fourth round. That makes it seem all but inevitable that Chandler will eventually ditch the bat to optimize his development on the mound. Hes been a fast-mover thus far and looks likely to continue that pattern, with a chance to show up on the big-league roster later this season, though a 2024 big league debut is more likely. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. 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. He did not hit well after the injury, but thats typical of hitters coming off a wrist fracture, and a second IL stint due to the wrist was an indication that it was bothering Davis throughout the year. DSL data is noisy, in part because pitchers there dont yet throw enough strikes or with much velocity compared to more advanced levels of the minors. As for the top three prospects on all six lists, their average rankings: Termarr Johnson - 28.2 Endy Rodriguez - 38.5 Henry Davis - 52 John Dreker + posts John started working at Pirates. by Retrosheet. 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. window.FGWebsite_head_section.buildProspectsListControls(); Its now fair to expect that the current version of Nicolas will be capable of holding down a spot toward the back of Pittsburghs rotation by the middle of 2024. 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 has a pronounced bat wrap. Readers should note that taking an aggressive line with players like this has yielded predictably mixed results in the past (so far, so good: Kevin Alcantara, Marco Luciano, Alexander Canario, Jordy Vargas, etc. 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. He throws precise, high-quality strikes with the heater, and the pitch has enough tailing action to have stayed off of A-ball barrels. Jerez has above-average power and a 70 arm. This also may have been part of why the Pirates lost so many players (11!) 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 fastball remains in the mid-90s but continues to underperform in terms of its bat-missing ability due to its hittable line. 1/ . Cristofer Melendez, RHP He had all the markers of a major league-ready Top 100 prospect prior to the injury, largely due to the progression of his changeup and its usage. It sounds like Brannigan is going to develop as a two-way player. 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. When we last saw Swaggerty for a full season of play, he was a 21-year-old whose nine home runs in 120 games was far lower than youd expect from someone with so much raw power playing in a hitter-friendly park. A successful 2022 pro debut (47.2 IP, 9.63 K/9, 3.59 BB/9, 2.64 ERA) driven by very advanced fastball command contrasts with skepticism about how Solometos stuff will play against older and better hitters. Be warned that he may hit for huge power at Greensboro in 2023, but the key thing to watch is his strikeout rate. Hell also show you a 92-96 mph fastball that plays down a bit due to its shape and Jimenezs lack of command, which caused him to walk 5.8 per 9 IP in 2022. To be fair, he was only about average in terms of OAA. His delivery also creates an odd angle on a mid-80s cutter/slider, which Solometo commands to his glove side. The husky Nunez swings really hard and generates big peak exit velocities. His 2022 performance deserves some age-related adjustment, but its possible we saw flaws in Pegueros game exposed by upper-level pitching. On Friday, FanGraphs released updated rankings. 76. Lopez swings exceptionally hard and makes some mechanical compromises to do so, but not in a way that has impacted his performance yet. 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. After coasting through the low and mid-minors, he finally hit a speed bump in 2022, posting his first below-average statline as a 21-year-old at Double-A Altoona. 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. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. That creates backspin and carry on his fastball and big depth on his curve. Eddy Yean, RHP Still, his tendency to roll his wrists over early in his swing, breaking up his attack angle, resulted in a groundball rate above 50%. Alessandro Ercolani, RHP Ideally, Nicolas can develop an offering that has some arm-side movement, one better than his current changeup that can prevent hitters from sitting on those glove-side locations. From 2017-21, Webbs strikeout rate more than doubled as a result of his uptick in arm strength. His low-80s slider, which has late, two-plane bite, has improved considerably and is now an above-average big league pitch. Hes been up to 100 mph, sits 96, and has solid glove-side command of a mid-80s slider. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. 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. With Endy Rodriguez around, it may not matter a ton. 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. He projects as a quick-moving no. 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. Bins is athletic for a catcher and has a good arm, but his receiving and contact skills are both 30s. Podcasts: . ago They do not like solemeto or Gonzalez. Big league sliders might force Davis to make an adjustment, but so far his contact performance has been solidly average. 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. 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. The depth-focused style of their rebuild in which the Pirates often got many mid-tier prospects back in trade rather than just one key piece has had some profound positive impacts on this system (its arguably why they have Cruz, Endy Rodriguez, Contreras, and four of their 40+ FV prospects or better on this years list) even as many of the pro departments targets have started to fizzle out at the upper levels. Yean, 21, was once a 40+ FV prospect in Washingtons system. It plays nicely with Flowers plus slider, and he has enough changeup feel to parachute one in against lefties once in a while. While his walk and strikeout rates were both descent through the first half of 2022, only nine of his 57 hits through mid-June went for extra bases (eight doubles and a home run). Nolasco had two years of surface-level statistical success in rookie ball and the huge exit velos to match, but now after three pro seasons, his strikeout rates show a troubling upward trend.