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. He appears tentative on routine throws and still isnt a sure-handed defender. There were some signs of offensive progress in 2022. 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. His mother spent her childhood in London, while his father "a real Brit; he still has an . Not exactly on topic, but Id love to get some thoughts on the recently graduated Jack Suwinski. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. While he has a low three-quarters slot that creates natural tail on his heater, Kennedy can still create riding life at the letters. Pegueros lack of throwing accuracy from shortstop is concerning. Unfortunately, he then lost the 2020 season to the pandemic and most of 2021 to a shoulder injury he sustained just 12 games into the season. . Fourth-round high school pitcher Owen Kellington was a participant in the 2021 Draft League and Combine, and looked like an interesting, slow-burning developmental prospect prior to a hamstring injury than ended his 2022 season. His 2022 performance deserves some age-related adjustment, but its possible we saw flaws in Pegueros game exposed by upper-level pitching. FanGraphs Prospects. Pittsburgh to add him to their 40-man roster after the season, indicating that hell be a big league relief option in 2023. wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs Pirates Top Prospect List You found it controversial, so we discussed it Subscribe & Listen http://linktr.ee . Quick backfield looks at him have his tools in more of an extra outfielder bucket for now. Brennan Malone, RHP. His changeup is deceptive against batters in both boxes, but in particular against righties, who have a 40% chase rate on the offering. 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 Pirates got a deal done for a cool million, nearly twice the slot amount in the fourth round. Across his 94.1 innings, he racked up 111 strikeouts against just 31 walks, with a 1.21 WHIP. The swing length and approach combination is scary enough to keep Lopez out of the 40+ FV tier even though he has this sort of upside. A double-plus hit tool leads the way for Termarr Johnson, a 5'7" 175 lb left-handed hitter who calls Jose Ramirez to mind on a quick visual evaluation. 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. Middle infielder Termarr Johnson, who the Pittsburgh. His swing decisions and ability to make contact out front and tap into his latent power improved throughout the season. Melendez (sitting 97) and Mateo (sitting 95) are upper-level relievers with poor control. 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. The top 38 spots on the list are all 55 FV or higher. Mechanically, Burrows adds additional length to his 6-foot-2 stature with an over-the-top delivery. The effects of a pro strength and conditioning program might kick-start him down the path toward finding a more consistent release and sustaining the big velocity as a pro starter. 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. You can really see his athleticism and remarkable hip/shoulder separation on his throws down to second. His finishing pitch, though, is his slider, a nasty upper-80s sweeper that generated a 50% whiff rate and 38% chase rate in 2022. 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. His breaking ball is his best pitch and he could be a lefty relief piece. His player page shows him above average in UZR/150, OAA and RAA (although only 1 in each of the latter two). 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. So the question is, was there actual improvement in his ability or is this just noise in the signal? 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. 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. 11/ . 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. His acrobatics and creativity at third base make him a plus defender there. The older brother of Ohio State wide receiver phenom Jaxson Smith-Njigba, Canaan is another of the many prospects acquired from the Yankees for Jameson Taillon. Top Prospects. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Scouting reports were. 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. Cheng entered 2022 coming off an incredible season in which he slashed .311/.449/.492 with twice as many walks as he had strikeouts. Kennedys delivery is simple, compact, repeatable, and easy-looking, and you can project heavily on his changeup because of this, though right now he often gets underneath it and it tends to cut on him. ago Selbys fastball sits 96-98 mph and he looks to blow it past hitters up in the zone. 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%. Hes still the contact-first, chop-and-spray hitter hes always been, an approach to hitting enabled and bolstered by his speed, which allows him to beat out infield singles. They all received. 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. 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. Prospects Coverage | FanGraphs Baseball In addition to sending Bradley back to Boston, the Milwaukee Brewers are also sending two of their top-30 prospects. None of his other pitches are above average in fact most of them are currently below average but Chen has plus command projection and a plus changeup, so hes pretty likely to pitch at the back of a big league rotation or as an innings-eating spot starter. Antwone Kelly, RHP Gutierrez has soft, quiet hands, he doesnt tip pitch type or location with runners on base, and he will drop to one knee when he receives some pitches as a means of framing them. 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. Some aspects of that optimistic projection still exist, while others have changed or are currently absent, but the tools package here is still on par with the middle of the everyday second baseman player population, and were hoping that young Peguero will polish up his games current smudges. His slot also helps generate two-plane sweep on his breaking ball. That makes it seem all but inevitable that Chandler will eventually ditch the bat to optimize his development on the mound. 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. The depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. This was a four-year rookie-level player who had suddenly been added to the Royals 40-man roster after the 2021 season even though he had all of 32 innings above Low-A. Acquired in a. 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. If this were a high school draft prospect, you would already know his name based purely on how explosive De Los Santos is 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. Jones checked all but two scouting boxes as a high school pitcher. 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. Their top ten, in. In his time at Bradenton, Chandler struck out 33 batters over 26 innings, and while his walk rate was an unacceptably high 15.8%, thats actually down a notch from what he was allowing over a larger sample on the complex. Terrero is a compact outfielder with a well-rounded skill set and strong rookie-level line. Solometos fastball sits in the 88-92 mph range. 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 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. Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports. Thats a very walkable path. Born Harrison Michael Ford, in Atlanta, 20 years ago this week, the right-handed-hitting catcher is the son of English immigrants. His slider has a sweeping horizontal shape, but his inability to locate it has hampered its utility. March 3, 2023. Silvera, 18, is a physically mature righty who missed a ton of DSL bats even though he only sits 88-90. Endy had an incredible 2022 statline .323/.407/.590 most of which was generated at hitter-friendly Greensboro. Maggi is, by definition, a Major Leaguer. He stayed healthy throughout 2022, throwing 70.1 innings, and was more effective out of the bullpen than in his late-season starts. 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. Like his other stuff, his feel for location is better than the movement hes creating on the pitch. Lolo Sanchez, CF 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. While prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . He is a 6-foot-5 20-year-old, after all. 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. 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 velo is up a tick since 2021, now comfortably sitting in the 95-96 mph range and routinely touching 98. Hes different from Kieboom (lever length) and Kiura (simpler footwork) in meaningful ways, but that entire group (and Downs) has had issues with letter-high fastballs, which Gonzales often swings underneath. Uribe, 20, is a projectable lefty with a 92-93 mph fastball and high-spin breaking ball. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. He throws precise, high-quality strikes with the heater, and the pitch has enough tailing action to have stayed off of A-ball barrels. Might the changeup develop over time into a plus pitch? 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. Milwaukee Brewers Batting Postseason Stats 2021. As a wrap-up, the Pirates have. A second base-only defensive fit puts the onus on Pegueros bat to perform at an everyday level. 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. 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. We. On defense, Rodriguezs size is both a feature and a bug. Triolo earned industry praise for his defensive aptitude and high marks for his baseball IQ and instincts. His swing may look different in 2023 and prompt a re-evaluation. He also has a promising sweeper slider, but he lacks typical physical projection for a teenage pitcher. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. Reports, tool grades, . Pirates 2B Termarr Johnson | 18 | A | 2025. Joness velocity and breaking ball quality (a power, mid-80s slider with vertical action) give him the floor of a really good reliever, especially if he can somehow throw harder an inning at a time. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. His range and footwork are great, while his actions and arm are fine. Hudson Head, CF He can already land his breaker in the zone and its angle should help it become a viable back-foot offering to righties. Its a shorter, less natural looking delivery than what Flowers had as an amateur, but hes been able to throw strikes with it. 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. Here's a link to the Top 25.. Link to the Top 50.. Link to the Top 75.. Ke'Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, Mitch Keller, Travis Swaggerty, Tahnaj Thomas and. 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. Once-Loved Outfielders His on-mound athleticism enables plus long-term command projection, though for right now Harrington really only locates his fastball to his arm side. 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. The 11-15 group consists of Jared Jones, Ji-hwan Bae, Anthony Solometo, Kyle Nicolas and Jared Triolo. 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. Thats something to watch as Jones continues to progress through the minors. Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. 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. 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. Hunter Stratton, RHP Ricky Tiedemann is one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in the game. The Pittsburgh Pirates are hiring. Gonzales has begun to track like Keston Hiura, Carter Kieboom, and Jeter Downs, and his swing shares mechanical similarities with both Hiura and Kieboom. To be fair, he was only about average in terms of OAA. He spent two years at a JUCO before heading to South Alabama in 2020, and he only pitched 21 total innings for the Jaguars due to the timing of his transfer. He walked more than a batter per inning in 2022. 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. 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. }); Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category. He was ranked 25th on the Pirates list at the end of 2022, but we were blown away after watching him on video and seeing some of his underlying DSL data during the construction of this list. A few months later, the Pirates emerged as the word-of-mouth favorite to sign him; he inked a deal for $750,000 in January. How impactful a starter may depend on how his changeup, currently a tertiary offering, develops at the big league level. 4/5 starter. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. He missed basically all of September and was shelled in the only start he made coming off the IL. 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. He absolutely towers over his father, who was twice a Baseball America Top 100 prospect but spent most of his pro career in Japan. Overall, there is a ton of in-zone swing-and-miss happening here. document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { Counter to our past reports, his swing is rather stiff and some of Lopezs length makes him vulnerable to pitches in on his hands. He also mixes in the occasional changeup or curveball, which accounted for a combined 11% of his offerings at Low-A. The FanGraphs prospect team presents their 2022 top 100 list . 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. After pitching well at the U-18 World Championships and at a Nike showcase in Asia, he signed for about $1.25 million, which is pretty sizable for a late-market signee. 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. 2023 600 PA / 200 IP Projections Steamer600. For the second straight year, he allowed a high rate of home runs, which inflated his ERA. Martin has plus-plus raw power and a 30-grade hit tool, not enough for first base but maybe enough for consideration overseas. Theyre finding them. He barely played in 2022 due to hamstring, elbow, and hip flexor injuries that cost him all but a couple of games. Pathways toward a more impactful role are most likely to be carved by Harringtons command outperforming this projection. 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. A core scouting rule of thumb is to take the long view with catchers who have impact offensive potential. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. 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. Obviously the 2021 draft was the big one, and seven players from that class are currently on the list. RotoWire News: Gonzales will join the Pirates' major-league camp this spring. Roelmy Garcia, RHP Even though he was sitting 96-98 in Arizona, Webbs fastball doesnt play like an upper-90s pitch right now, and his mid-80s breaking ball quality is highly variable (lots of 30s, some 50s). Jimenez has a very good sweeping, upper-70s curveball and creates plus action on a changeup that he sells with fantastic arm speed. His size creates some stiffness and imbalance during his swing, which can lead to him putting suboptimal contact in play. Currently, Kennedys best attribute is multi-faceted fastball utility. From 2017-21, Webbs strikeout rate more than doubled as a result of his uptick in arm strength. Jesus Castillo, SS Despite all of that, Priester took a hit in a lot of the national prospect outlets, dropping off quite a few Top 100 lists. Axiel Plaz, C He has above-average bat-to-ball skills and very little power. If a clearer path at third base existed in this org, that might have been enough for us to do it. His two-plane slider has nasty, late break and his changeup might have late projection because his arm action is so clean and loose. Podcasts: . 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. Even with that in mind, any team would be happy to sign a teenager with this kind of stuff for just $750,000 of their bonus pool. De Los Santos contact metrics are a hair south of average, and thats the biggest indicator that theres real risk here, but boy, there is also real ceiling. Across the 2022 calendar, Davis had nearly as many HBPs as he did extra-base hits, to which the wrist fracture likely contributed. Hernandez showed up to 2022 spring training with a harder breaking ball than he had previously shown, and as the season went along, he added to his fastball as well. 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. 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. Blanco is a gigantic corner outfield/1B prospect who had the most present raw power in the January 2022 international signing class. by Retrosheet. He showed a velo spike (92-96) at the onset of the 2022 college season before his arm strength and command regressed. Those risks apply here. Righties get a nice long look at everything Solometo does, and he could be very platoon-vulnerable against big leaguers. Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports. Jackson Glenn, 2B. These rankings are now available on The Board on the 2023 Fantasy Rankings tab, where you can also see the Top 120 Dynasty Rankings!. Aspects of the offensive profile that made him exciting in the first place are still here, led by Pegueros compact but authoritative swing, which is especially good at punishing pitches at the very top of the strike zone. His breaking ball has inconsistent length and he has a relief-only mechanical look, but hes throwing quite hard. 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. Not Quite Enough Hit Tool 2023 Opening Day Tracker. He entered the 2022 spring as a high-probability 40 FV prospect who some scouts thought belonged in the 40+ tier because of pitching approach changes Barco could make in pro ball that might enable a breakout, but he ended up blowing out his UCL and having Tommy John in May.
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