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 was one of the younger players available in the 2022 draft and yet at a listed 205 pounds, Kennedy is more physically mature than most of his peers, even some who are a year or two older than he is. Pittsburgh graduated two top-50 prospects in 2022 (Oneil Cruz and Roansy Contreras) and still has a top-five system, or close to it, because of the three potential stars atop the group and the many upper-level, core role-playing hitters who should arrive in the big leagues soon. His breaking ball is his best pitch and he could be a lefty relief piece. Big league sliders might force Davis to make an adjustment, but so far his contact performance has been solidly average. With Endy Rodriguez around, it may not matter a ton. He also has a promising sweeper slider, but he lacks typical physical projection for a teenage pitcher. 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. Maggi is, by definition, a Major Leaguer. Like his other stuff, his feel for location is better than the movement hes creating on the pitch. Robert_roberts82 1 min. 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. Aside from the persistent Bryan Reynolds trade rumors, the general industry sentiment is that the team is shifting from prospect collection mode and into a phase where those players start to arrive. If you split his season exactly in half, the improvement is obvious. 76. Grant Hartwig is one of the most promising under-the-radar prospects in the New York Mets system. Righties get a nice long look at everything Solometo does, and he could be very platoon-vulnerable against big leaguers. He used his upper-90s fastball for in-zone whiffs, relying on his above-average slider as a chase pitch. He also mixes in the occasional changeup or curveball, which accounted for a combined 11% of his offerings at Low-A. He has become meaningfully stronger over the last year and has more of a balanced, low-ball swing now, as opposed to the slash-and-dash style of contact in his pro debut. 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. A proactive bullpen move could put him in position to debut in 2024. When healthy, he was a hard-throwing 40 FV reliever. He was promoted to Bradenton and fell into a rhythm where each pitching appearance was buttressed by an off day before and after it, with the 19-year-old DHing in the intervening days. Cristofer Melendez, RHP D-backs Dodgers Giants Padres Rockies: Offseason Tools. 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. Injured Arms They have Hunter. Ke'Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, Mitch Keller, Travis Swaggerty, Tahnaj Thomas and. 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. 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. 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. Pittsburgh Pirates Top 10 Prospects Updated by Marc Hulet September 10, 2018 The Pirates system doesn't have immense depth or a long line of high-impact players but the big league club could. 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. His player page shows him above average in UZR/150, OAA and RAA (although only 1 in each of the latter two). His command and changeup are both still works in progress, but his 2022 fastball strike% (68%) is an encouraging sign, and again, Jones has a special level of athleticism that should enable him to hone both over time. The 2021 edition of this list featured some carping about Eric Longenhagen ranking Gabriel Moreno in the 100, because he was the exact kind of player who might not have been highly regarded in earlier eras of public prospect evaluation but who had all the markers of future success. To be fair, he was only about average in terms of OAA. He has a career .387 OBP but hasnt been able to actualize his plus raw power in games, driving the ball into the ground at a whopping 66% clip in 2021 and a 54% rate in 2022. Chen is a very advanced righty with a deep repertoire led by his plus changeup. 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). So the question is, was there actual improvement in his ability or is this just noise in the signal? 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. Jose Tabata / OF. He would slot among Priester and Ortiz on this list had he completed a totally healthy 2022. During a full season at Double-A in 2022, he saw time at third base, shortstop, and center field, and in 2023 hell start seeing more time at second base. 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. His overall pitch recognition, especially against breaking balls, has become a more noticeable issue. Hes a good enough defender that hed probably being playing shortstop had he ended up at Arizona State, but in pro ball the keystone is Johnsons likeliest defensive home given his maxed-out, stocky build and what projects to be somewhat limited range. It plays nicely with Flowers plus slider, and he has enough changeup feel to parachute one in against lefties once in a while. His pop times are routinely in the 1.85-1.95 range in part because Endy has a strong arm, but also because hes almost always leaving his crouch before he even receives the pitch on steal attempts, which hastens his exchange. 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. Hes already taken a sizable step in the breaking ball department in just two pros seasons. Here's a link to the Top 25.. Link to the Top 50.. Link to the Top 75.. Reports around his once-stellar defense have dimmed, and were hoping its due more to rust and lost time than to an actual regression in ability. On defense, Rodriguezs size is both a feature and a bug. 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. Milwaukee Brewers Batting Postseason Stats 2021. As a wrap-up, the Pirates have. 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. Very Young Prospects to Monitor 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. Be warned that he may hit for huge power at Greensboro in 2023, but the key thing to watch is his strikeout rate. Throw in the visual twitch and athleticism, and this is the player Spotifys algorithm would recommend to FanGraphs if prospects were musical artists. 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. 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 was passed over in the 2022 Rule 5 Draft despite his stuff quality because hes so raw as a strike-thrower. 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. Defensively, he has mostly played second base so far in his professional career, with just a handful of starts at short. Juan Jerez, 3B His chase rates were at or below league average across the board, further emphasizing the troubling command. 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. Not counting his time at the alt site in 2020, last season was Boltons first time back in competitive action since 2019. 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. Solometo certainly has superficial frame-based projection, but his athleticism and explosiveness are comfortably below whats typical of someone who finds more and more velocity deep into their 20s. Sanchez runs pretty well. Massey, going on 23, is a very loose, projectable college prospect from Minnesota. As you can probably imagine of a Division-I football commit, White is already very physical, buff to the point where he looked a little bit stiff during his pre-draft summer. 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. After the season, he again played winter ball, this time in Puerto Rico with Carolina, where Cheng struggled. Top Prospects. Overall, there is a ton of in-zone swing-and-miss happening here. 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. Back with former Astros pitching coach Brent Strom in Arizona . Instead, Lopez picked up some reps in the Dominican Winter League, just a few games against the most advanced competition he has yet seen, and is poised to spend 2023 as a 21-year-old at Altoona. In some respects, its easy to assess DSL players. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. He spins the hell out of everything that leaves his hand, in particular his slider, which averaged over 2,700 rpm, but his inability to fine tune his command puts a damper on its utility (his walk rate was an untenable 12.4% across his 75.2 innings of work). Nunez started 2022 at St. Louis Double-A affiliate before being dealt to Pittsburgh as part of the Jos Quintana deal at the trade deadline. 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. 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. Selbys fastball sits 96-98 mph and he looks to blow it past hitters up in the zone. 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. A two-way high school player, Jones was clearly a superior prospect as a pitcher, as he was one of the most electric on-mound athletes to roll through the high school ranks over the last decade. The husky Nunez swings really hard and generates big peak exit velocities. 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. He seems able to make some mid at-bat adjustments to this type of pitch but then ends up playing a guessing game with breaking balls. 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. He has a delivery similar to Ubaldo Jimnezs, where his front side flies way open and he tilts out, which helps Kellington get to a vertical arm slot. Hunter Stratton, RHP 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 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. Garcia is only 19 but is already sitting 96. 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. 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. 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. 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. Isaias Uribe, LHP Jerez has above-average power and a 70 arm. His slider has a sweeping horizontal shape, but his inability to locate it has hampered its utility. Smith-Njigbas on-base skills drive an above-replacement forecast here, but its tough to project a real big league role, and he may be an interesting candidate for teams in Asia. Pirates 2B Termarr Johnson | 18 | A | 2025. Hes been up to 100 mph, sits 96, and has solid glove-side command of a mid-80s slider. His fastball velocity is down, in the 92-94 mph range, a far cry from Priesters upper-90s peak. He then played for Taiwans National Team at the WBSC U23 World Cup and helped los Caimanes de Barranquilla win the Colombian Winter League and later the Caribbean Series. He commands it consistently enough to his glove side to project as a starter. On Friday, FanGraphs released updated rankings. The FanGraphs prospect team presents their 2022 top 100 list . 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. . Anthony began writing over 10 years ago, starting a personal blog to cover the 2011 MLB draft, where the Pirates selected first overall. Even though both Davis and Rodriguez are near-ready catching prospects, they arent redundant, and in fact they complement each other well. The Pittsburgh Pirates are hiring. Eddy Yean, RHP 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. While prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. 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. Campana, soon to be 21, is the youngest of this group. Castillo is a loose rotator without a lot of bat speed, but he seems to find a way to put the bat on the ball and the power might come if he gets stronger. 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. Alessandro Ercolani, RHP 2023 600 PA / 200 IP Projections Steamer600. That makes it seem all but inevitable that Chandler will eventually ditch the bat to optimize his development on the mound. The emergence of a consistently above-average third offering reignited Burrows projection as a starter (he had been projected as a reliever here in previous seasons, in part due to injuries), and of his 24 outings in 2022, only two came out of the bullpen and just four were shorter than three innings. He fills out the bottom half of the zone with his slider, itself an impressive bat-misser, thanks again to Dombkowskis command. Indeed, of his offerings, only his four-seamer had a whiff rate above the big league average, and he struggled to keep that pitch competitive, only throwing it for a strike 57% of the time. 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. ), and some of the recent, perhaps overzealous examples (Maikel Escotto, Rodolfo Nolasco) are in this system. 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. Flowers velocity has never really popped in a big way despite some of the late projection because of his conversion. 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. 2018 Brewers batting, pitching, and fielding traditional and advanced stats. Tony Sanchez / C 6. 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. 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. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb. as compiled by Ben Clemens and the FanGraphs staff. Acquired in a. This also may have been part of why the Pirates lost so many players (11!) He can already land his breaker in the zone and its angle should help it become a viable back-foot offering to righties. 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. He walked more than a batter per inning in 2022. Jackson Glenn, 2B. 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. LSU played . That puts pressure on his plate discipline to improve, since right now Lopez is a little too proactive at the plate and might be exposed at the upper levels. 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. 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. 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. They all received. His carrying tool is still his defense, especially his receiving, which is crafty and advanced. 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. 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. But at other times, he had difficulty maintaining the velocity as the innings wore on, which was compounded by his ongoing command inconsistency. Thats hard enough to do for any batter, let alone one whose schedule also includes the grueling demands of pitching development. Despite all of that, Priester took a hit in a lot of the national prospect outlets, dropping off quite a few Top 100 lists. Gonzales has begun to track like Keston Hiura, Carter Kieboom, and Jeter Downs, and his swing shares mechanical similarities with both Hiura and Kieboom. 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. Blake Cederlind, RHP He has an interesting long-term body projection and breaking ball combination. This impressive performance inspired his offseason 40-man addition. Pedro Alvarez / 3B 2. His swing is already geared for lift, but he doesnt currently have the raw juice to make the most of it. Opinions around Shim vary because he offers less physical projection than is typical in the international talent space, even for an older pitcher. Triolo earned industry praise for his defensive aptitude and high marks for his baseball IQ and instincts. 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.
Idot Standard Specifications For Road And Bridge Construction 2016,
Articles P