This FV grade is commensurate with a mid-first round high school infield prospect. In August of 2022, Jun-Seok announced he would skip the September KBO draft in order to sign with an MLB club right away. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. 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. RT @NorthShoreNine: wNS9+ With @longenhagen Discussing the @fangraphs Pirates Top Prospect List You found it controversial, so we discussed it Subscribe & Listen . We added RosterResource's Depth Charts; these reflect a team's current. RotoGraphs. If you want to read me wax poetic about that you can check out my end of year review. 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. A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. 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. He moved into a minor league relief role in 2022. Matt Gorski, OF 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. 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. 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. Swaggerty matched the nine home runs he posted in 2019, but this time, he did so against better pitching, in fewer at-bats, and in a much less hitter-friendly park, and he improved on his walk rate by a couple of ticks. He projects as a quick-moving no. Defensively, he has mostly played second base so far in his professional career, with just a handful of starts at short. Nicolas has consistent glove-side command of his entire repertoire, and he tends to live on that half of the plate exclusively. This is one of those prospects fantasy players should value more highly than this because of his potential home run output, whereas defensive limitations cause us to value his real-world roster fit in this range. Hes on the 40-man roster and will likely get a chance to sink or swim on the big league roster in 2023. Thats a very walkable path. 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. For instance, hes struggled badly on defense, wracking up 46 errors combined the last two seasons. 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. Sammy Siani, LF. 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. document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { Meanwhile, Chandlers post-promotion production at the plate plummeted to a sub-.200 batting average and an OPS of just .574, thanks largely to a strikeout rate just barely south of 40%; he launched just a single dinger in his 32 Low-A games compared to three in his 14 games on the complex. 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. 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. 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). Sanchez runs pretty well. 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 2017-21, Webbs strikeout rate more than doubled as a result of his uptick in arm strength. With Endy Rodriguez around, it may not matter a ton. Obviously the 2021 draft was the big one, and seven players from that class are currently on the list. 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. Not counting his time at the alt site in 2020, last season was Boltons first time back in competitive action since 2019. Prospects Coverage | FanGraphs Baseball In addition to sending Bradley back to Boston, the Milwaukee Brewers are also sending two of their top-30 prospects. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. 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. That creates backspin and carry on his fastball and big depth on his curve. Hunter Stratton, RHP If you split his season exactly in half, the improvement is obvious. As of list publication, Rodriguez is one of just two catchers on Pittsburghs 40-man roster, and while its possible hes beaten out by a veteran non-roster invitee like Tyler Heineman, Rodriguezs defensive chops and versatility give him a shot to break camp with the big club, split time with Austin Hedges, and moonlight at one or two other positions before eventually seizing the primary catcher job. His maxed-out frame is cumbersome on the infield, but his footwork at first base has improved a ton since he started playing there, and weve updated our previous DH-only projection. 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. 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. From a heuristics standpoint, you cant do much better than Rodriguezs profile. Hes been up to 100 mph, sits 96, and has solid glove-side command of a mid-80s slider. Some of his early-career success seems to have stemmed from his physical maturity. 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). His Adonis-like physique helps him generate plus pull-side power, and he will show it to you without overswinging he simply lacks bat control and breaking ball recognition. Gonzales has begun to track like Keston Hiura, Carter Kieboom, and Jeter Downs, and his swing shares mechanical similarities with both Hiura and Kieboom. Ke'Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, Mitch Keller, Travis Swaggerty, Tahnaj Thomas and. His slider lacks nasty, biting movement, but his arm slot makes it tough on lefty hitters, and his command of it gives it back-foot utility against righties. His slider has a sweeping horizontal shape, but his inability to locate it has hampered its utility. 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. Lolo Sanchez, CF 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 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. He commands it consistently enough to his glove side to project as a starter. (One weird scouting note: Peguero chokes up with two strikes, but only with his top hand, creating separation between his two hands la Kevin Youkilis.) 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. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. 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. To be fair, he was only about average in terms of OAA. 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. A fresh start with a new org (he was a waiver claim this offseason) might help him find a swing that produces more power. Jackson Glenn, 2B. His low-80s slider, which has late, two-plane bite, has improved considerably and is now an above-average big league pitch. Tony Sanchez / C 6. Terrero is a compact outfielder with a well-rounded skill set and strong rookie-level line. 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. 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. 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. 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 absolutely towers over his father, who was twice a Baseball America Top 100 prospect but spent most of his pro career in Japan. That's nearly 30% of all their picks coming up as noteworthy prospects. Scott, Siani, and Campana all have big physical tools and have all struggled badly from a bat-to-ball standpoint. 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. Brennan Malone, RHP. 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. Barring a velo bump or another significant alteration to some of the more concerning elements of his profile, he looks like a single-inning up/down reliever. 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. More glove-side fastballs might help him set up his sweeping slider more effectively, as that pitch has good-looking movement but wasnt a dominant offering in college. When an opposing pitcher releases the ball, the scoop in Johnsons bat head is pointing at the mound with his back elbow hiked way up above his shoulder in a position that seems to defy the rules of normal human physiology. In some ways, this makes aspects of De Los Santos data even more impressive, because hes turning around soft DSL pitching with ridiculous pace. 11/ . Its unlikely hell make enough of an offensive impact to be a primary catcher, but hes very likely to spend time on big league 40-man rosters as a second or third catcher. Rodriguezs arm is comfortably plus. 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. His 2022 performance deserves some age-related adjustment, but its possible we saw flaws in Pegueros game exposed by upper-level pitching. His changeup is deceptive against batters in both boxes, but in particular against righties, who have a 40% chase rate on the offering. 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.