The component parts of a scouting, tools-oriented look De Los Santos frame, bat speed, and infield actions put him in that range, while the DSL data reinforces it somewhat. Flowers has pitched very well in the mid-minors (he carried a 2.88 ERA with Altoona in 2022) and hes been especially good at avoiding walks for a pure relief prospect. He could get a cup of coffee in 2023. Priesters four-seamer is divisive. A core scouting rule of thumb is to take the long view with catchers who have impact offensive potential. Thats something to watch as Jones continues to progress through the minors. Injured Arms 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. Even though hes so young, youre not really projecting on his frame in a positive way so much as it feels possible Kennedy could have impact command at maturity, because his delivery is so effortless and the quality of his fastball strikes so advanced. 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. Endy had an incredible 2022 statline .323/.407/.590 most of which was generated at hitter-friendly Greensboro. The Pirates claimed him off waivers and quickly lost him to the Diamondbacks in the minor league phase of the 2022 Rule 5 draft. There isnt suddenly big power here or anything like that, but its the start of a physical step that was likely necessary for Cheng to take to play major league ball. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. 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. Could Solometo eventually throw harder? Pittsburgh Pirates 2021 Top 50 Prospects Drew Maggi looks to make Majors with Pirates - mlb.com Format = Team Position Player | Age on 4/1/23 | Highest level played | ETA. He also has a promising sweeper slider, but he lacks typical physical projection for a teenage pitcher. Pittsburgh Pirates Stats | FanGraphs Baseball He walked more than a batter per inning in 2022. Top 35 Prospects: Pittsburgh Pirates | FanGraphs Baseball 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 been able to maintain nearly average contact rates despite a pull-heavy approach to contact. 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. 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. Cederlind, 27, spent 2022 recovering from Tommy John, and he had renewed soreness during his rehab, which is part of why he missed the whole year. His chase rates were at or below league average across the board, further emphasizing the troubling command. Looking forward to fangraphs being wrong Campman92 5 min. Jackson Glenn, 2B. His multi-tasking fastball plays at the letters due to angle and also gets a groundball when located down, but at just 91-94 mph, its still a below-average pitch. 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. That's nearly 30% of all their picks coming up as noteworthy prospects. He has basically been the same guy since he entered pro ball, sitting 94-95 with ineffectual shape and a pretty good slider. He spent more of his big league time in the outfield than at his native second base. He stayed healthy throughout 2022, throwing 70.1 innings, and was more effective out of the bullpen than in his late-season starts. Fangraphs' Top 42 Pirates Prospects Across the 2022 calendar, Davis had nearly as many HBPs as he did extra-base hits, to which the wrist fracture likely contributed. Youll occasionally see a low-90s changeup from Hernandez as well, but hes a relief prospect all the way and likely to stick in Pittsburghs bullpen despite below-average command. Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports. Out over the plate, he has a tendency to stay inside fastballs and lift them toward the opposite field gap. 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. Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Signed as an undrafted free agent in 2021, the 25-year-old right-hander has a degree in microbiology and premedical studies from Oxford, Ohio's Miami University, and he has worked as a . Cubs pitching prospect Hayden Wesneski is proving he belongs in his latest Spring Training outing. Jose Tabata / OF. Perhaps as an adjustment to deal with this issue, Priester now mixes in plenty of fastballs for which he pronates on release, giving the pitch screwball-like spin. Pirates Reds: NL West. Top 42 Prospects: Pittsburgh Pirates | FanGraphs Baseball 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. There were some signs of offensive progress in 2022. They had a ton of depth and a need to fill their Triple-A roster with external veterans in case of injury, and its likely that they mis-evaluated some of their own players who they should have protected, players like Trey McGough, Cristian Charle, Joelvis Del Rosario, Austin Roberts, Wilkin Ramos, Jared Oliva, and Peter Solomon, all of whom have either been on past prospect lists or were flagged for interesting performance or characteristics during this list cycle. A second base-only defensive fit puts the onus on Pegueros bat to perform at an everyday level. We added RosterResource's Depth Charts; these reflect a team's current. Because theyre about the same age as high school draft prospects, apples-to-apples projection and tools comparisons are feasible, which then allows you to triangulate where theyd be selected in a draft based on those comparisons and get a sense of how to FV them. As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. In some respects, its easy to assess DSL players. A two-way high school prospect, Flowers was primarily a center fielder at Florida State but transitioned to the mound full-time in pro ball. 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). Both feel like high-floored backend or long relief types who need to walk an atypical path to an impact role. 2023 Offseason Tracker. 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. Alessandro Ercolani, RHP Its going to be fascinating to watch him develop, and if it doesnt work, hell probably still be a viable reliever. He commands it consistently enough to his glove side to project as a starter. Rodriguezs arm is comfortably plus. Don't Count Quinn Priester Out Due to Low Strikeouts Top 100 Prospects For 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training Snapshot 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. Theyre finding them. Mets Prospect Grant Hartwig Has an Unusual Background and an East-West 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. With Endy Rodriguez around, it may not matter a ton. Ricky Tiedemann is one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in the game. 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. 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. Bins is athletic for a catcher and has a good arm, but his receiving and contact skills are both 30s. Solometos fastball sits in the 88-92 mph range. Prospect Report: Diamondbacks 2023 Imminent Big Leaguers 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). Middle infielder Termarr Johnson, who the Pittsburgh. 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). Hudson Head, CF It sounds like Brannigan is going to develop as a two-way player. Despite all of that, Priester took a hit in a lot of the national prospect outlets, dropping off quite a few Top 100 lists. For the second straight year, he allowed a high rate of home runs, which inflated his ERA. 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. 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. 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. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. 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. 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. When healthy, he was a hard-throwing 40 FV reliever. All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. Blake Cederlind, RHP 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. The Pittsburgh Pirates are hiring. The Royals designated Webb for assignment in mid-November and he elected free agency before signing with the Pirates. Massey, going on 23, is a very loose, projectable college prospect from Minnesota. 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. Cristofer Melendez, RHP This is the third year were delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which youll see in the position column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. Mason Martin, 1B 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. Jerez has above-average power and a 70 arm. They all received. as compiled by Ben Clemens and the FanGraphs staff. by Retrosheet. He missed basically all of September and was shelled in the only start he made coming off the IL. 2018 Brewers batting, pitching, and fielding traditional and advanced stats. While he has a low three-quarters slot that creates natural tail on his heater, Kennedy can still create riding life at the letters. Hes not a great defender right now, and probably wont ever be better than a 40-grade glove, but Davis frames high strikes well and has plus raw arm strength. While he hasnt continued producing the mid-to-upper-90s velocity he did during college relief outings, Nicolas still sits a respectable 92-95 mph and leans on his two above-average breaking balls, a low-80s curveball and a mid-80s slider. 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. A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. 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. Diego Cartaya (37) - Catcher Cartaya is listed a little higher in The. Thats hard enough to do for any batter, let alone one whose schedule also includes the grueling demands of pitching development. The 11-15 group consists of Jared Jones, Ji-hwan Bae, Anthony Solometo, Kyle Nicolas and Jared Triolo. However, Priester makes up for it with his preferred secondaries a huge, arcing curveball that Priester has had forever, and a more recently developed mid-80s slider both of which have garnered swing-and-miss rates well above the big league average. 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. 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. Maggi is, by definition, a Major Leaguer. He pitched for Panamas U18 team in September and showed a good changeup and fair slider as well. His low, short-armed slot is like a righty version of Reiver Sanmartins delivery. Neil Walker / 2B 5. 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. 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. 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. . 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 depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. RT @NorthShoreNine: wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs Pirates Top Prospect List You found it controversial, so we discussed it Subscribe & Listen . His fastball remains in the mid-90s but continues to underperform in terms of its bat-missing ability due to its hittable line. Mlodzinski started for most of his 2022 season at Double-A but was called upon for middle-inning relief on a few occasions, and though it was only a handful of appearances, he was more effective as a reliever than as a starter. Campana, soon to be 21, is the youngest of this group. If you split his season exactly in half, the improvement is obvious. 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. 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. 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. That makes it seem all but inevitable that Chandler will eventually ditch the bat to optimize his development on the mound. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. 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. So the question is, was there actual improvement in his ability or is this just noise in the signal? 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 prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . Gonzales hands work in a short, explosive loop. Shim is a big, physically mature righty with huge present arm strength, creeping into the upper 90s. 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. Triolo earned industry praise for his defensive aptitude and high marks for his baseball IQ and instincts. The Pirates are going to develop him at many different positions with the hope that he can provide a late-game upgrade at a couple different spots (hes already very good at third base), serve as righty power off the bench, and work in middle relief. Top Prospects. FanGraphs Prospects. 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.