Mechanically, Burrows adds additional length to his 6-foot-2 stature with an over-the-top delivery. 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. He and Solometo have the same flavor of stuff wrapped in different packages. While he has a low three-quarters slot that creates natural tail on his heater, Kennedy can still create riding life at the letters. 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. Selbys fastball sits 96-98 mph and he looks to blow it past hitters up in the zone. 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. 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. 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. Milwaukee Brewers Batting Postseason Stats 2021. Webb dealt with a forearm strain that delayed the start of his 2022 season. Back with former Astros pitching coach Brent Strom in Arizona . All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. A fresh start with a new org (he was a waiver claim this offseason) might help him find a swing that produces more power. Before he was drafted he was considered, at least at FanGraphs, a more likely reliever due to the quality of his stuff. Middle infielder Termarr Johnson, who the Pittsburgh. 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 FanGraphs prospect team presents their 2022 top 100 list . Cheng entered 2022 coming off an incredible season in which he slashed .311/.449/.492 with twice as many walks as he had strikeouts. 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. 2023 Opening Day Tracker. 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. 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. A second base-only defensive fit puts the onus on Pegueros bat to perform at an everyday level. Clubs like the Pirates arent making buyers trades, so they have little to no incentive to move a potentially great young player, which in turn means teams have little incentive to scout said player. 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. Quants and front office analyst types are more bearish, citing issues with Priesters fastball playability. His swing is already geared for lift, but he doesnt currently have the raw juice to make the most of it. 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. 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. All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. 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. 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. Plaz had a cartoonish line in the DSL (he slugged over .700), but hes very burly and physically mature for a 17-year-old, so wed like to see him do it stateside. 2022 Top Prospects | THE BOARD | FanGraphs 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. Oneil Cruz, SS Video Signed: July 2nd. 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. That makes it seem all but inevitable that Chandler will eventually ditch the bat to optimize his development on the mound. 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. Very Young Prospects to Monitor Quick backfield looks at him have his tools in more of an extra outfielder bucket for now. In some respects, its easy to assess DSL players. An extreme groundball pitcher in a small sample, he allowed just two home runs in 35.2 innings of work in 2022. Thats something to watch as Jones continues to progress through the minors. But he was then shut down and had TJ, which ended his season early enough that he could be back in 2023. Spotty command and limited fastball utility push Mlodzinski into a multi-inning relief role. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Tony Sanchez / C 6. 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. Still, his tendency to roll his wrists over early in his swing, breaking up his attack angle, resulted in a groundball rate above 50%. 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. 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. 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. 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. Hudson Head, CF Bolton was able to stay healthy for the entirety of 2022, which was an accomplishment in itself given that his professional career has been plagued by injury since it began. 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. ago They do not like solemeto or Gonzalez. Thats hard enough to do for any batter, let alone one whose schedule also includes the grueling demands of pitching development. From 2017-21, Webbs strikeout rate more than doubled as a result of his uptick in arm strength. The type of contact he makes is unlikely to ever lead to home run power commensurate with a true everyday player, but Bae makes enough stinging, all-fields contact that he projects to hit plenty of doubles and triples. His acrobatics and creativity at third base make him a plus defender there. He used his upper-90s fastball for in-zone whiffs, relying on his above-average slider as a chase pitch. But at other times, he had difficulty maintaining the velocity as the innings wore on, which was compounded by his ongoing command inconsistency. 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). RotoGraphs. LSU played . Theyre finding them. So compact and short to the baseball is Rodriguez that he can wait an extra beat to diagnose pitch types, which enables him to make in-flight adjustments to breaking balls, spoil the well-located ones, and crush the hangers. He still has a pretty exciting hit/power combination for a player his age, showing a proclivity for big contact to dead center and the opposite-field gap, the latter in part due to his length, which causes him to be late. Big league sliders might force Davis to make an adjustment, but so far his contact performance has been solidly average. 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. Solometos fastball sits in the 88-92 mph range. 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. Escotto, 20, was a 40+ FV prospect after his huge DSL season and later became part of the Jameson Taillon trade, but he struggled very badly in 2022 and needed to be demoted back to Low-A. Hes on track to debut in 2025 as a starter if those issues improve and as a reliever if they do not. 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. Hayden Wesneski is a 25-year-old starting pitcher in the Chicago Cubs system. 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. 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 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. 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. Last year, Fraizers 2021 performance at Greensboro (which included 20 homers) convinced us that he had a chance to be a big deal, but his plate discipline was a big problem against Double-A pitching. He has now struck out nearly 30% of the time during each of the last two seasons, but hes still performed comfortably above the league average at each stop because of the quality of the contact he does make. His fastball velocity is down, in the 92-94 mph range, a far cry from Priesters upper-90s peak. 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. 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. 4/5 on a contender. Matt Gorski, OF Be warned that he may hit for huge power at Greensboro in 2023, but the key thing to watch is his strikeout rate. Top 51 Prospects: Pittsburgh Pirates | FanGraphs Baseball 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. The Pirates claimed him off waivers and quickly lost him to the Diamondbacks in the minor league phase of the 2022 Rule 5 draft. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every teams list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. by Retrosheet. 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. Isaias Uribe, LHP As a high schooler, his ultra-low spin splitter seemed like the more promising pitch, but his feel for it has regressed. 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 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. 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. Prospects Coverage | FanGraphs Baseball In addition to sending Bradley back to Boston, the Milwaukee Brewers are also sending two of their top-30 prospects. window.FGWebsite_head_section.buildProspectsListControls(); 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. His player page shows him above average in UZR/150, OAA and RAA (although only 1 in each of the latter two). Theyve tripled since his claim-staking 2019 DSL season and Nolsaco Kd at a whopping 34% rate in the 2022 Florida State League. 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. 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. His low, short-armed slot is like a righty version of Reiver Sanmartins delivery. and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. The site listed four Dodgers prospects on their list. 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. He moved into a minor league relief role in 2022. He signed for $900,000 and barely played in the 2022 DSL. 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.