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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. Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. by Retrosheet. Even though both Davis and Rodriguez are near-ready catching prospects, they arent redundant, and in fact they complement each other well. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Shim is a big, physically mature righty with huge present arm strength, creeping into the upper 90s. 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. A fresh start with a new org (he was a waiver claim this offseason) might help him find a swing that produces more power. Prospects Coverage | FanGraphs Baseball In addition to sending Bradley back to Boston, the Milwaukee Brewers are also sending two of their top-30 prospects. Selbys fastball sits 96-98 mph and he looks to blow it past hitters up in the zone. 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 FanGraphs prospect team presents their 2022 top 100 list . 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. Andres Silvera, RHP. The reason why he graded out so positively was due to his arm, gunning down runners like crazy, which was fantastic, and his tool grade for his armwas a 40. 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. He throws precise, high-quality strikes with the heater, and the pitch has enough tailing action to have stayed off of A-ball barrels. feels like the more realistic path to an eventual 45-grade role, or above. Campana, soon to be 21, is the youngest of this group. Still right on the cusp of graduating from prospect eligibility, Kranick made four appearances in the minors to start the 2022 season before being called up to the major league bullpen. 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 . Oneil Cruz, SS Video Signed: July 2nd. 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. 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. 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. Hes on the 40-man roster and will likely get a chance to sink or swim on the big league roster in 2023. Roelmy Garcia, RHP Maikol Escotto, 2B 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. Melendez (sitting 97) and Mateo (sitting 95) are upper-level relievers with poor control. Top Prospects. He was Rule 5 eligible after the season, and hitters who have performed that well at High-A tend to be added to their clubs 40-man roster, but Lopez doesnt have a crystal clear defensive home and his plate discipline needs a lot of seasoning, so he wasnt a real threat to be taken. 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. Hes poised for a big league bullpen role this season and has a repertoire thats deep and nasty enough that he should be considered a late-inning option. An extreme groundball pitcher in a small sample, he allowed just two home runs in 35.2 innings of work in 2022. The depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. 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. 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. He missed basically all of September and was shelled in the only start he made coming off the IL. Might the changeup develop over time into a plus pitch? Those games were taking place amid weight-lifting and practice for the coming football season and then during the season itself, so Whites balance of strength and flexibility might change as he trains just for baseball. He and Solometo have the same flavor of stuff wrapped in different packages. Hes 19 and struggled over the winter in Australia. Enmanuel Terrero, OF 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). While he was already throwing quite hard, Ortiz came into even more velocity in 2022 and averaged 97 mph on his fastball, up two ticks from 2021. Out over the plate, he has a tendency to stay inside fastballs and lift them toward the opposite field gap. Oliver Mateo, RHP If he continues missing bats at High-A in 2023, though, Pittsburgh may be forced to add him. The Pirates got a deal done for a cool million, nearly twice the slot amount in the fourth round. In August of 2022, Jun-Seok announced he would skip the September KBO draft in order to sign with an MLB club right away. We added RosterResource's Depth Charts; these reflect a team's current. 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. Before he was drafted he was considered, at least at FanGraphs, a more likely reliever due to the quality of his stuff. Righties get a nice long look at everything Solometo does, and he could be very platoon-vulnerable against big leaguers. 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. Davis skills and offensive style are tailored like those of Evan Gattis. 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. Diego Cartaya (37) - Catcher Cartaya is listed a little higher in The. As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. Cristofer Melendez, RHP He re-emerged in 2022 as a 24-year-old at Triple-A, and had an offensive season commensurate with that of an extra outfield prospect, a lefty stick with more raw power than hed hit for in games, but enough bat to play a bench role provided hes capable of playing center field. Born Harrison Michael Ford, in Atlanta, 20 years ago this week, the right-handed-hitting catcher is the son of English immigrants. Ke'Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, Mitch Keller, Travis Swaggerty, Tahnaj Thomas and. 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. 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. Even if sliders are a chronic issue for Davis, hell likely still get to enough power to produce better than the average everyday catcher. Pegueros lack of throwing accuracy from shortstop is concerning. Scouting reports are. His size creates some stiffness and imbalance during his swing, which can lead to him putting suboptimal contact in play. 2022 Pittsburgh Pirates Summary Stats Schedule Player Usage Depth Chart The depth charts found on the Team Pages are based on projected playing time, NOT the current status of a team's roster. Theyre finding them. 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. He is a 6-foot-5 20-year-old, after all. But theres big arm speed here and big riding life to Shims fastball. The organization will be thrilled if . To be fair, he was only about average in terms of OAA. 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. The high-waisted Lopez has a wide range of athletic/mobility outcomes that will impact where he ultimately ends up on defense. He finished 2022 at Altoona and has a chance to be in the big leagues at some point this season. 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. Scouting reports were. 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. 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. Opinions around Shim vary because he offers less physical projection than is typical in the international talent space, even for an older pitcher. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. While prospect list ultimately isn't what makes a player great, it is . 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. This time around, the Top 100 has even more Moreno types, prospects who combine . Here are the Pirates' 2023 Top 30 prospects March 1, 2023 Pirates' Chandler going all in on pitching February 28, 2023 Pirates return No. 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. 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. The top six were already know from this list, because Fangraphs had six Pirates in their top 100 prospects. He has a pronounced bat wrap. 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. If he moves to first base, this will become especially scary. 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. 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. 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. You can really see his athleticism and remarkable hip/shoulder separation on his throws down to second. Jerez has above-average power and a 70 arm. Back with former Astros pitching coach Brent Strom in Arizona . 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. Hes an arm strength reclamation project with a shot to pitch in Pittsburghs bullpen. If it does, he should be a 50, and that grade was discussed during the Pirates list-making process. Here hes projected as a no. They all received. Quick backfield looks at him have his tools in more of an extra outfielder bucket for now. RT @NorthShoreNine: wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs Pirates Top Prospect List You found it controversial, so we discussed it Subscribe & Listen . He can already land his breaker in the zone and its angle should help it become a viable back-foot offering to righties. 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. 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. Mechanically, Burrows adds additional length to his 6-foot-2 stature with an over-the-top delivery. Hes on track to debut in 2025 as a starter if those issues improve and as a reliever if they do not. 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. 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). The 11-15 group consists of Jared Jones, Ji-hwan Bae, Anthony Solometo, Kyle Nicolas and Jared Triolo. It could stand to have more consistent depth, but the flashes are there, and remember that Kennedy is barely 18. 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. 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. RotoGraphs. 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. Scott, Siani, and Campana all have big physical tools and have all struggled badly from a bat-to-ball standpoint. 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. He sits in the upper 80s right now but has promising underlying traits and plenty of time to develop. Maggi is, by definition, a Major Leaguer. The top of this draft class right now is LSU outfielder Dylan Crews, who had a big weekend. Quants and front office analyst types are more bearish, citing issues with Priesters fastball playability. Luigi Hernandez, RHP. It can be found here. 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. 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. He used his upper-90s fastball for in-zone whiffs, relying on his above-average slider as a chase pitch. Bins is athletic for a catcher and has a good arm, but his receiving and contact skills are both 30s. Pirates 2B Termarr Johnson | 18 | A | 2025. His fastball velo is up a tick since 2021, now comfortably sitting in the 95-96 mph range and routinely touching 98. 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. Its going to be fascinating to watch him develop, and if it doesnt work, hell probably still be a viable reliever. These rankings are now available on The Board on the 2023 Fantasy Rankings tab, where you can also see the Top 120 Dynasty Rankings!. His fastball velocity is down, in the 92-94 mph range, a far cry from Priesters upper-90s peak. A second base-only defensive fit puts the onus on Pegueros bat to perform at an everyday level. 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. Moreover, he has one of the more unusual profiles in professional baseball. Gonzales has begun to track like Keston Hiura, Carter Kieboom, and Jeter Downs, and his swing shares mechanical similarities with both Hiura and Kieboom. His acrobatics and creativity at third base make him a plus defender there. 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. 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. 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. He projects as a quick-moving no. Flowers velocity has never really popped in a big way despite some of the late projection because of his conversion. Chandlers pitching performance wasnt as lights-out as it had been pre-promotion, but it was still a display of the rightys potential. FanGraphs Prospects. Those risks apply here. 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. But given his age and the amount of runway still afforded to him, this was seen as a speed bump for his development rather than being of great concern at the time. Grant Hartwig is one of the most promising under-the-radar prospects in the New York Mets system. 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 bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. 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.