Pittsburgh Pirates Top 38 Prospects

Chandler was a two-sport, two-way high schooler who could have gone to Clemson for baseball and football. Instead, he signed for $3 million as the first pick in the 2021 third round and was developed as a two-way player for parts of two seasons before focusing on pitching beginning in 2023. Things have gone very well. Across the last two seasons, Chander has worked at least 110 innings and struck out a little more than a batter per frame, with his walk rate trending down to a little better than the big league average as he climbed to Triple-A last August. He was still sitting 95-98 at the very end of the season, even as he set a career-high mark for innings, and he has been in the 96-99 mph range during the spring of 2025.

Chandler’s fastball is his best pitch. He hammers the top of the zone with it, and it generated plus chase and miss in 2024. His 86-90 mph changeup has progressed very quickly. It can sometimes sail on him, but it has plus tailing action that misses bats when Bubba keeps it down in the zone, and it can occasionally steal a strike by running back over the corner of the plate even when he mis-releases it. His slider hasn’t taken quite the same leap; too often it backs up on him and is hittable despite sitting 88-90 mph. It didn’t miss bats consistently in 2024, but its ceiling is still pretty exciting because of how hard Chandler throws it.

Though his delivery is a bit more effortful than most big league starters, and he has occasionally struggled with walks as a pro, Chandler’s athleticism and multi-sport background make me want to continue projecting on his command deep into his 20s. There’s still development happening here (for instance, Chandler made his first start on four days rest in the middle of 2024), but so far, Chandler’s dev is going as well as could have been hoped when he was drafted, and he’s tracking like a mid-rotation starter. He’s entering his 40-man platform year and could debut late in the season so he can retain his rookie eligibility into 2026.

Ashcraft came back from Tommy John with a vengeance in 2023 and earned a 40-man roster spot. He was utterly dominant across his first 50 innings of Double-A to start 2024 and was promoted to Triple-A Indianapolis where, after a couple of outings, he was put on the IL three separate times with recurring forearm issues, the last of which ended his season. He has arrived at 2025 camp with intact velocity and has been sitting 95-97 in Grapefruit League action, but injuries are an inescapable aspect of Ashcraft’s profile due to his history and the violent nature of his delivery.

When healthy, Ashcraft has good stuff, and he should be a meaningful contributor to Pittsburgh’s pitching staff this year. His bread-and-butter pitch is his 88-ish mph slider, which has impressive length and depth for such a hard offering. It generated miss rates north of 40% in 2024, as did Ashcraft’s slower, 82-85 mph curveball, which he uses more as a backfoot weapon against lefties. Though his arm angle creates relatively ineffective movement on his fastball, Ashcraft’s mid-90s velocity makes up for it somewhat. Similar to Quinn Priester, there might be some issues with Ashcraft’s fastball getting hit, or at least he may have to pitch off his breaking stuff more frequently against big league hitters and thus operate less efficiently from a strike-throwing standpoint. He has never had issues throwing strikes in pro ball (his walk rates have tended to hover in the 3-7% range during his career), but Ashcraft is more of an in-zone bully who gets groundballs than he is surgeon. He has the pitch mix and strike-throwing ability of a starter, but he hasn’t demonstrated starter-level durability because his career has been interrupted by injuries and the pandemic; his 73 innings in 2024 were comfortably a career high.

Ashcraft was optioned just before list publication (he has two left, while most of the Pirates’ projected rotation either doesn’t, or is named Skenes or Jones), but he should graduate at some point this season as he’s called upon in response to injury. He has the talent to be a no. 4 starter when healthy.

Griffin went wire-to-wire as one of the most talented high school players from the 2024 draft class during that group’s two-plus year scouting window, a turbocharged power/speed prospect with potential contact issues and an unclear defensive fit. His physical tools were still so loud that he was a top pick anyway, going ninth overall. Those blemishes and uncertainties kept Griffin’s pre-draft grade beneath the Top 100 prospect threshold, but the early returns in 2025 have been very positive, as Griffin looks good during his first extended run in center field and his potentially problematic swing has already been changed.

Griffin was the shortstop for his 6A State Champion high school team in Mississippi but was a little too stiff to play there on the showcase circuit. He mostly played right field with Team USA and at select events because his feel for the outfield wasn’t as polished as his more experienced peers, who were more seaworthy in center field. But Griffin absolutely has the wheels to not only play center, but to potentially be really good out there, and his 2025 spring look has been very encouraging. Griffin has made some great plays out there, which is even more amazing when you consider that he didn’t play affiliated ball after last year’s draft and has just been thrown into the deep end of the pool during big league spring training. The speed with which Griffin can go zero to 60 at his size is incredible. He takes huge, powerful strides and motors around the field with a rooster tail of dirt kicking up from his spikes. His center field reads and routes should improve as he gets more reps, which he has only just begun to receive.

From a data standpoint, Griffin’s bat-to-ball track record was very good on the showcase circuit (86% contact rate in 2023 in a 250-pitch sample), but his long levers often made him late on fastballs. Similar to high school Druw Jones, Griffin’s bat path really didn’t allow him to pull the ball, and players who struggle with this in amateur ball tend to do so to an even greater degree in pro ball when opposing velocity cranks up. The (potentially) good news here is that Griffin has already changed his swing. His open stance is gone, and when he loads his hands, the angle of his barrel is no longer pointed back toward the pitcher at such an aggressive angle. It’s too early to tell what the overall impact of these changes will be, but this is a more compact swing than Griffin’s high school model. The fact that he’s been able to take a brand new swing into big league spring training games and hold his own is very exciting. With the “center field defense” box looking like it’s going to be checked, there’s room for Griffin to have some contact hiccups and still be an impact player so long as he’s getting to power and wreaking havoc with his speed. He slides into the Top 100 next to Arjun Nimmala, who has also made some early-career swing adjustments in an effort to mitigate his hit tool risk.

A famous low-slot high schooler, Barco ended up matriculating to Florida, where he was part of the Gators’ rotation for all three years. His final season in Gainesville ended with a Tommy John. He returned from surgery in time to throw 18.1 innings in 2023, his first pro frames. In 2024, Barco enjoyed a two-tick velocity bump compared to 2023 and looked the best he has since high school. Aside from two consecutive bad starts in June, Barco was dominant at High-A Greensboro for three months (3.34 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 30.4% K%) and then was briefly promoted to Double-A Altoona in July before he was shut down for the rest of the year with a stress reaction in his left tibia. Barco’s velocity has been up again in the spring of 2025, peaking in the 96-97 mph range. If he can sustain mid-90s heat all year, then he’ll have made a good case to be on next offseason’s Top 100 list, as his secondary pitches have tended to carry his profile, especially when he was living around 90 mph at Florida.

Barco’s cross-bodied delivery and low slot help create big lateral wipe on his slider, which tends to play better as a strike-stealer than it does as a finishing pitch against lefties. You’d think a low-slot southpaw like Barco would wreck opposing lefties, but he missed bats much less frequently against them in 2024 than he did against righties, who he can carve up with back foot sliders. It’s a curiosity to monitor across a bigger sample in 2025 as Barco navigates Double-A. For my money, Barco’s best strikeout pitch has long been his splitter, which was de-emphasized at UF. It constituted roughly 10% of Barco’s pitches in 2024, almost always when he was ahead in the count. Barco lives on the arm-side edge of the plate with this 81-84 mph split, which is also (though more conventionally) a superior option against righties. Barco enters his 40-man platform year very likely to be rostered after the season and likely to compete for a rotation spot in 2026. He has the upside of a good team’s no. 4 if he can sustain his new velo across an entire season.

Yorke was the biggest surprise of the 2020 draft’s first round. He was a known bat-first prospect from California, but time off recovering from a shoulder surgery and the pandemic made him tough to evaluate properly before the draft — tough enough that he was not generally seen as a first-round prospect, though he has turned out to be pretty good. Yorke had a great 2021 pro debut, then his 2022 was impacted by myriad injuries (turf toe, back stiffness, wrist soreness). He rebounded and was terrific in 2023 and 2024, and during the latter season was traded to Pittsburgh at the deadline in exchange for pitcher Quinn Priester. Yorke made his big league debut after that but didn’t play enough to lose rookie eligibility. He enters 2025 as a career .284/.365/.443 hitter in the minors and should play a meaningful role for the bat-needy Pirates this season.

But what position will he play? Yorke has long been a below-average second base defender and, prior to his trade, Boston had begun to deploy him in left field. After he became a Pirate, all bets were off. The team let Yorke play a little bit of third base and both corner outfield spots in the big leagues, as well as some shortstop and center field at Triple-A Indianapolis. He has also played some first base during 2025 spring training in the wake of the Spencer Horwitz injury. Yorke has been fine in limited action at all four corner positions and will likely be a versatile big league defender, albeit not an especially skilled one.

Yorke’s bat is going to carry him to a productive big league career, though there are some odd aspects of his profile that stopped me from stuffing him in the Top 100. Most notably, Yorke has some of the most bizarre reverse splits you’ll ever see on a hitter. His OPS versus righties has been 150-190 points higher than it is against lefties every year aside from his injury-riddled 2022. The angle at which Yorke’s bat traverses the hitting zone just doesn’t seem to mesh well with the way lefty pitches approach the plate. In general, he has a fairly extreme inside-out style of hitting, with the majority of his contact sprayed to the opposite field. It dilutes Yorke’s above-average raw power and bat speed, and limits his “happy zone” to the down-and-in quadrant of the box. It’s going to be fascinating to watch this play out over a larger big league sample. This is a unique hitter whose bat-to-ball feel should enable him to be a core role player.

Harrington comes out of a small but mighty Campbell program that has helped produce several relevant prospects over the last few years, including three first rounders since 2019. One of those was Harrington, the 36th overall pick in 2022 as a draft-eligible sophomore, a pitchability righty who has pretty much coasted through the minors. After he began 2024 on the IL with a rotator cuff strain, Harrington dispatched Double- and Triple-A hitters to the tune of a 2.61 ERA across 22 outings, the final eight of which came at Triple-A Indianapolis. A super-efficient strike thrower, Harrington had the lowest walk rate of his career in 2024 at a microscopic 4.1%, and threw strikes at a 68% clip. He is in the José Urquidy mold; Harrington has a deep repertoire led by a power-sink changeup in the mid-80s, his lone pitch that generated an above-average whiff rate in 2024. His cambio sinks enough to play as a bat-misser against both lefties and righties. His ability to dot his fastball on the arm-side corner of the plate helps him set up his changeup to finish hitters off. His inability to do this for his slider via well-placed glove-side fastballs is still limiting his breaking ball’s effectiveness. Too many of Harrington’s sliders look like 82 mph cutters and don’t finish enough to create a miss. There’s a chance that, like Urquidy, Harrington becomes more homer-prone in the big leagues than he has been in the minors. But pitchers with good changeups and good command tend to be pretty stable rotation pieces, and it’s likely Harrington slots in toward the back of Pittsburgh’s rotation at some point in 2025 or 2026.

The fourth pick in the 2022 draft, Johnson’s projection is settling into that of a second-division regular at second base. His fairly extreme platoon splits (.789 OPS vs. RHP, .634 vs. LHP) and dwindling overall contact rate (69% in 2024) would put him toward the bottom of the big league second base population. A career .239/.390/.406 hitter in the minors, Termarr largely has an OBP-driven profile now. His best swings still feature an exciting uppercut loft, and he has a good feel for oppo contact against pitches down-and-away from him, but his inability to cover the top third of the strike zone has been much more of an issue in pro ball than was understood when he was drafted.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about Johnson’s underlying TrackMan data is his relative lack of raw power, which is a shade below the big league average in terms of his max exit velo and hard-hit rate. If there’s a good big league second baseman whiffing as much as Johnson, perhaps a comp that one can lean on in the hope that Termarr can still be an average or better regular, it’s Brandon Lowe. But Lowe’s raw power is on a different level than Termarr’s is at the moment and, at a physically mature 5-foot-9, Johnson lacks the traditional physical projection that might lead one to forecast more raw pop for him down the road. The Pirates have continued to deploy Johnson at shortstop some of the time, but realistically he’s going to be a fair second base defender. It might behoove them to try him at third base or in an outfield corner to increase his versatility and allow for him to play a multi-positional role rather than just be a lower-end everyday second baseman.

Perhaps the best high school defensive player in the entire 2024 draft, Sanford is a precocious leathersmith with velcro hands. Even at a lanky 6-foot-1, he plays smooth, low-to-the-ground defense and has good range, and he should grow into plus arm strength as he fills out. Offensively, Sanford has a great looking lefty swing, but he lacks feel for sweet spot contact. He can move the barrel around the zone pretty well and had an 82% contact rate on the showcase circuit, but he isn’t making especially loud contact yet. It’s really fun to watch him uncoil; this is a loose rotator whose swings often feature a gorgeous finish in the dirt behind him. Sanford was ranked 31st on the 2024 Draft Board and signed with Pittsburgh for $2.5 million rather than go to Texas Tech. His defense arguably gives him the highest floor of the many exciting young prospects in the Pirates farm, and if he can successfully add power, he’ll have the tools of an everyday player.

Florentino was the best Pirates prospect in the 2024 DSL, a lefty-hitting masher whose swing has a huge, damage-seeking uppercut path so extreme that even Larry Holmes wonders if Florentino should tone it down. It might eventually lead to elevated strikeout rates, but that hasn’t been a part of the prologue of Florentino’s career, as he hit .260/.432/.459 with an 18.9% strikeout rate in his debut season. Because his size will likely limit him to first base down the road (he’s playing a mix of first base and the outfield right now), Florentino is going to have to hit a ton to profile, but his highly entertaining swing looks like it’s at least going to enable him to check the power box on the scout card. Over time, he’ll have to prove whether or not the contact portion is actually there, but so far, so good.

Alfonzo is a power-hitting catching prospect who has now had offensive success in A-ball, with a .252/.357/.403 line in 2024 that undersells how much power there is here (his 53% hard-hit rate helps illustrate it). Lefty-hitting catchers with this kind of power potential are rare. Alfonzo has a low-ball swing and tends to be a little bit late against fastballs, but he’s a physical and explosive rotational athlete whose swing’s loft should help him get to power. Alfonzo is still very raw as a receiver and framer, but he has an impact arm, and he nabbed 33% of would-be basestealers in 2024. How he develops on defense will dictate his ceiling.

De Los Santos has not yet been able to break through and have full-season success; each of the last two seasons, he’s done well in the Complex League (.344/.407/.505, 146 wRC+ in 2024) but then struggled when promoted to Bradenton (.195/.300/.264 and a 72 wRC+ for the second straight year). He remains tantalizingly tooled up and physically projectable, wielding plus bat speed and a rocket arm while playing acrobatic defense (including at shortstop). But De Los Santos’s swing remains so long that he is often too late to the contact point. This results in lots of contact driven into the ground or lofted down the right field line, as well as whiffs against elevated fastballs. Yordany’s underlying contact data isn’t bad, but unless he’s able to successfully shorten up and be more on time to pull the baseball, it will probably get worse as he climbs and faces better fastballs. His shortstop defense gives De Los Santos some swing-and-miss margin for error in this regard, but he’ll still have to access more power than his swing currently allows to be successful. The physical tools here are so big that if the Pirates can successfully make a change, De Los Santos could break out.

Severino came to the Pirates in the trade that sent Carlos Santana to the Brewers at the 2023 deadline. His 2023 season was limited to a mere 15 games between the Brewers’ and Pirates’ complex affiliates due to a hamate injury, but in just 63 plate appearances, he was able to slug five homers. In 2024, Severino said, “Here’s Jhonny!” to the FCL, as he slashed .291/.373/.545 en route to a promotion to Bradenton, where his strikeout rate nearly doubled from 15.9% to 30.1%. He was still able to slug 16 homers in 84 total games last year, and now has 21 bombs in his last 99 games.

There is chase-driven hit tool risk here, as Severino went fishing far too often after he was promoted. Severino has plus bat speed and pull power potential, but he needs to be more selective if he’s going to hit upper-level pitching. He is similarly volatile on defense. Sevy has the range (jailbreak 4.1s from the right side) and arm strength to play shortstop, but he’s an erratic and inconsistent defender at both left side infield spots. A high-upside/high-variance prospect with exciting ceiling, Severino will likely break camp with Bradenton and hopefully cut his K’s in his first full season. He has everyday upside.

Suero came to Pittsburgh from the Padres in the Rich Hill/Ji Man Choi 2023 deadline trade. He stands out the second he gets off the bus because of his size, which is more common for an NBA small forward than a baseball player at a lanky 6-foot-6. Suero, who skipped the DSL in 2023, had a rough 2024 line on the complex (.213/.318/.307) but he missed most of May and June with a broken hamate, which likely impacted him during the final three weeks of the season.

Suero’s feel for center field is quite good. He eats up a ton of ground in the outfield thanks to his gargantuan strides and he actually has a chance to stay out there depending on just how big he gets. Suero has hit tool risk. His front side stays very high through contact and his levers are long, so he’s vulnerable in a few different ways. But he tracks pitches well and is already hitting the ball hard for a prospect his age, let alone one who might be able to add 20 plus pounds of mass and strength as he matures. He has enormous upside as a switch-hitting center fielder with power, but it’s probably going to take him a while to develop, and it wouldn’t be shocking to see him start 2025 back on the complex. Hopefully Suero hits well enough to spend the latter part of the summer in the stadium rather than on the backfield. He’ll probably be slow-played through A-ball in 2026 to keep him out of Rule 5 shouting distance, making 2027 the key year for him to hit well enough to be rostered.

Blanco is a Leviathan corner outfield/first base prospect who had the most raw power in the 2022 international signing class, and now has some of the most explosive raw power in all of baseball. He absolutely towers over his father, who was twice a Baseball America Top 100 prospect but spent most of his pro career in Japan. The younger Blanco signed for $900,000 and barely played in the 2022 DSL before he finally got on the field consistently starting in 2023. In 2024, his first playing stateside ball, Blanco slashed .305/.385/.505 before his season was cut short by a hamstring injury.

Sort your pro ball TrackMan spreadsheet by “2024 Max Exit Velocity” and the top of the leaderboard reads: Oneil Cruz, Giancarlo Stanton, Shohei Ohtani, Joshua Mears, William Contreras, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Aaron Judge, and then Blanco, who hit a ball 117.5 mph last season. This is an athlete with rare size and strength for a baseball player; he makes catchers and umpires look like Hobbits from the center field camera angle. Blanco has strikeout risk (there’s a chance he’s Kyle Blanks and never quite taps into all of his power), but he encouragingly cut his K rate from 37.6% in the 2023 DSL to 28.4% in the 2024 Complex League. That’s about 10 percentage points, but roughly a 25% reduction in his prior year’s rate. It’s totally reasonable for Blanco to strike out that much if he has elite power, and it looks like he’s going to. He did have a 63% contact rate last year, and there are basically no full-time big leaguers with contact rates that low. He needs to improve this part of his game, but he’s trending in the right direction. Because he’s such a physical outlier, it’s tough to predict how he’ll trend athletically, and what that will do to his fit on defense. He only played first base in 2024 and might just be a DH. Bouts with injury in two of his three seasons are also of concern. But, man, this is an exciting power-hitting prospect without many size/strength peers in baseball at all, let alone at his age.

Burrows’ injury history (most recently shoulder inflammation in 2022 and Tommy John in 2023) and dwindling number of options shade his projection into the multi-inning relief area, even though he’s pretty likely to play a spot starter role for at least one more season. After he returned from TJ in 2024, Burrows worked 51.1 innings across 16 outings before making his big league debut in September.

Though he’s thrown enough strikes to start and has fleshed out his repertoire over time (first with a changeup, which has become Burrows’ best pitch, and then with a cutter/slider), Burrows is now 25 and there’s still no way of knowing how the vert-slot righty would hold up to 120-plus innings of work.

Burrows’ fastball was very vulnerable to loud contact in 2024 (his opponent xwOBA was north of .400 against his heater), so working more heavily with his secondary stuff might benefit his effectiveness, which of course is a more realistic approach for a pitcher to take in a long relief role. Burrows can dump his curveball into the zone for strikes, and his changeup has bat-missing sink, but his upper-80s slider/cutter generated roughly average miss at Indianapolis last year and is more of a way to stay off barrels than get a strikeout. Burrows will begin 2025 back at Indy but will likely exhaust his rookie eligibility this season. With just one option remaining, it’s likely he ends up on the big league roster permanently in 2026 and beyond.

Reed had a fantastic first full pro season, as he generated a 1.99 ERA across 108.2 innings, mostly at Low-A Bradenton. His arm action is very, very long and is difficult for Reed to repeat, which impacts his fastball’s effectiveness. So, too, does its lack of movement. The good news is that Reed has two plus secondary offerings in his mid-80s changeup and slider, both of which generated miss rates north of 50% in 2024. Reed’s entire repertoire works downhill, which helped him generate groundballs at a 50% clip. Grounders are probably going to be an important part of Reed’s skill set because his long arm swing hinders his command. The occasional double play will help him pitch around what will likely be an elevated walk rate for a starter. If Reed’s feel for location fails to progress, he has the stuff to be a dynamite multi-inning reliever. He’s got two or three years to polish his strike-throwing enough to be a starter, a timeline that puts him on track to earn a consistent big league role in Reed’s second option year.

Curtis began his college career at Texas A&M, where he had a botched nerve transposition surgery and needed a second one to correct it’. He ran an ERA over 7.00 at ASU but was throwing hard, which has continued in pro ball. Curtis was up to 99 mph and sitting 94-96 across 75.1 Low-A innings in 2024. All four of his secondaries (which is a lot of secondary pitches for a crude, relatively underdeveloped college pitcher) generated plus miss last season. His upper-70s curveball has tight 12-to-6 arc, his upper-80s cutter moves late, and his mid-80s slider lives in between the two of them in terms of both velocity and shape. Curtis also has a one-seam sinker-style changeup that he has pretty good feel for locating. He’s a crude strike-thrower but has prototypical big league pitcher size and athleticism, and after his first pro season, he now has two years of post-high school pitching experience. Curtis is a surface-scratching potential rotation piece, or a nasty long reliever if his command doesn’t progress.

Matoma was playing at the Dodgers’ academy in Uganda (which MLB has since shut down because it was virtually all unsigned players working out at a team facility) when he was signed out from under them by Pirates scout Tom Gillespie, who has been scouting in Africa for over a decade. The super athletic little righty was among the hardest throwers in the 2023 DSL and had a 0.00 ERA in his first pro season, then came to the U.S. in 2024 and posted a 0.82 mark.

Matoma sits 95-98 and will touch 100. When his delivery is synced up, his fastball also has upshoot angle that low-level hitters can’t even sniff. He looks like a reincarnation of Yordano Ventura, a supreme little athlete with arm speed that breaks the sound barrier. Though his command is far from precise, Matoma throws enough strikes to warrant optimism that he can be developed as a starter, and the way his fastball plays won’t require him to be super fine with his location. His slider’s quality is very volatile pitch to pitch. He often gets on the side of it, which gives it the look of an 87 mph cutter. The best ones have short, three-quarters shape with late tilting action.

The foundation of a high-leverage relief prospect is already here, and Matoma’s baseball background might leave room for all kinds of development on top of what he’s already doing. He’s athletic enough to be optimistic that he’ll eventually have a good changeup, too. This is a volcanic profile, a very talented athlete with huge arm speed who is great to have in the system. If you dropped a prospect like this into the draft, Matoma would get a $2 million bonus or so, which is why he’s FV’d in line with a second round pick here.

The brother of Yordany De Los Santos, Johan is speculatively projected to center field here due to his sketchy infield look at the U18 WBSC tournament in August 2024. He ran a jailbreak 3.8 and 4.0 (meep meep) at that tournament, though. That speed will play in center if development on the infield doesn’t occur. On offense, De Los Santos’ hands are really lively and he rotates with verve through contact. His hands load low and his swing has a late hitch, and it might need adjustment against pro velocity. It’s also possible things will simplify for him with strength and maturity, and that it won’t take a mechanical overhaul at all. He’s a Roman Quinn type prospect who signed for $2.5 million in January.

Sterling ranked 68th on our 2024 Draft Board and was seen as more of a projectable strike-thrower than a high-upside power pitcher, but the Pirates paid him like a late-first rounder ($2.5 million) and he signed rather than go to Texas. He’s a skinny 6-foot-5 righty with a relatively advanced repertoire and an effortless delivery.

For a pitcher his size, Sterling has a short, repeatable arm stroke, and he threw strikes at a 67% clip on the showcase circuit and during tracked varsity play in 2024. His fastball was in the upper 80s during the fall of 2023 with Team USA, then was more in the 92-93 mph range during his senior spring. Sterling’s secondary pitches all have distinct shape and movement; he lives around the zone with them but lacks precise command. None of his secondary weapons are particularly nasty right now, and they require projecting on Sterling to throw everything at least a little harder in order to be so, but while he’s tall, he isn’t necessarily the high-end athlete for whom it’s easy to do that sort of thing. He’s a good prospect, but he’s seen here as more of a low-variance backend starter type.

Morel had a deal with the Dodgers for a little north of $1 million, but he worked out for teams the week before 2025 signing day (in Dodgers gear) and was offered (and agreed to sign for) $1.8 million by Pittsburgh the next day. He’s a super lanky and projectable infielder with a plus arm and plus power projection. Morel’s size at maturity will likely lead to a third base fit. There’s hit tool risk here; scouts have seen him whiff during BP. Morel has a risky, high-upside corner infield profile and will begin his career in the 2025 DSL.

Solometo was a very high-profile amateur pitcher. He was drafted in the second round, but he was given a bonus commensurate with the 24th overall pick ($2.8 million) as one of several exciting high schoolers Pittsburgh landed with the pool space freed up by Henry Davis‘ under-slot agreement. His statistically successful 2022 and 2023 seasons contrasted with skepticism (at least here at FG) about how his lackluster pure stuff would play against older and better hitters. In 2024, the proverbial “stuff” (or in this case, a lack of it) hit the fan for Solometo, as he not only got rocked at Double-A Altoona (his ERA was a shade below 6.00), but his strike-throwing regressed in a surprising way. He lost about four ticks off his already vulnerable fastball and was only sitting only 88 mph. Indeed, many of his fastballs were erroneously auto-tagged by TrackMan as changeups because they were so slow. Solometo was shut down in June and sent back to the complex to rework his stuff and delivery. When he returned to Altoona in August, his funky lefty slinger mechanics (which evoke Madison Bumgarner) featured even more cross-bodied action than before. His velocity rebounded into the 90-92 range, but Solometo was still walk-prone.

I’ve made no changes to Solometo’s grade or expected future role; he was written up as a fifth starter last year and I still think that’s what he’ll end up being. It isn’t shocking that he would initially struggle with his command after making fairly substantial changes to his stride direction, and he should refine his feel for location with the new delivery over time. The other piece of Solometo’s repertoire that was way down in 2024 was the performance of his slider, which had a 37% miss rate in 2023 and a 26% rate in 2024. He used it much less after returning from the Development List, and instead leaned more often on his changeup. Slider playability is the key 2025 variable here, as it will tell us if Solometo has righted the ship or if it’s indeed sinking.

Cook comes from a very athletic family, especially on his mom’s side, as she played basketball and volleyball at Air Force and was one of three Division-I athletes in her family; for his part, Cook’s dad played baseball at Air Force. Cook went undrafted during the shortened 2020 season and returned to Pepperdine for his senior year, which was impacted by an oblique injury. A shrewd senior sign by Baltimore in 2021, Cook broke out in 2023 when he hit 24 homers and stole 30 bases at Double-A Bowie. The Pirates targeted him in trade in 2024, sending pitching prospect Patrick Reilly to Baltimore. Cook made his big league debut after the deal, getting a 16-game cup of coffee in September during which he played all three outfield positions and first base.

Cook is really to toolsy but his tendency to over-swing in order to sell out for pull power puts his overall profile at risk. He will hit some epic pull-side homers (you do not want to hang a breaking ball against this guy), but he swings underneath a ton of elevated fastballs. The good news is that Cook has a sneaky shot to play center field. He’s a plus-plus runner with a plus arm who has experience at six different positions, including a little bit of second and third base. His feel for center field isn’t great, but at the moment neither is Oneil Cruz’s, and you can make a pretty good case that Cook is the best center field defender on the Pirates’ 40-man roster right now even though he’s currently below average. He might improve to average if he were given consistent opportunities out there, as he certainly has the speed for it; he will run 4.2 flat to first on the regular. If he’s not a center fielder, then he’s going to be an impact defender in right. He’s projected here as the smaller half of an outfield platoon.

Brannigan is a polarizing former two-way player whose swing features extreme launch that allowed him to club 30 homers in 115 High-A games (combined in 2023 and 2024) despite fringe average contact rates and measurable raw power. The chief reason that Brannigan is polarizing is because there’s disagreement about how sustainable his swing and approach are. His arm bar, bat path, and cut-it-loose style cause him to cut underneath a ton of fastballs in the top third of the strike zone. But Brannigan has been dangerous to all fields since turning pro and has uncommon in-game power output for a viable shortstop. He K’d 33.5% of the time at High-A when he was promoted there in 2023, then cut that to a more respectable 26.1% when he repeated the level in 2024. At his age, performing at High-A is mandatory to be considered a prospect, and Brannigan’s .238/.344/.490 line clears that bar. He’s also patient and will add some offensive value via walks. Realistically, Brannigan is going to strike out too much to be a regular shortstop, but he should hit for enough power to be a utility option similar to Zack Short.

Cheng is a scrappy little infielder who has become much stronger than I expected he would even just a year or so ago. Is he suddenly going to hit for meaningful power? Probably not, but his added strength has enabled him to handle average-or-better big league velocity better than before, and he’s no longer just a slash-and-dash style hitter at risk of getting the bat knocked out of his hands. Cheng lacks prototypical shortstop arm strength, but he’s acrobatic, creative, plays with big effort, and finds a way to make most plays. He is coming off a BABIP-depressed .225/.329/.347 line at Altoona and Indy, and should be able to play a sixth infielder role on a big league roster.

Far from hole-y Toledo, Jeral has pretty exciting plate coverage for such a young, projectable switch-hitter, especially from the left side of the dish. He tracks pitches well from both sides of the plate and is especially adept at altering his posture to get the barrel on high fastballs. He has surprising pull ability for a relatively long-levered hitter, and there’s room for yet more strength on his body. Defensively, Toledo looks like he’s landlocked at second base, and unless he begins to branch out and become more versatile, his forecast is binary: Either he hits enough to be an everyday second baseman, or he’ll be tough to roster. The linchpins of Toledo’s profile are his strength and future power.

Delgado is an undersized middle infield prospect who came to Pittsburgh as the Player to be Named Later in the JT Brubaker trade with the Yankees. After striking out in the 11-13% range in rookie ball the prior two seasons, Delgado struggled to adjust to the quality of secondary stuff at Low-A and K’d at a 21.8% clip with Bradenton in 2024. That’s not awful, but Delgado’s splits against offspeed stuff (with miss rates north of 40%) are concerning, and he needs to make an adjustment against them if he’s going to outpace this lower-impact utility grade. His right-handed swing isn’t especially usable, but his left-handed swing is dangerous and capable of torching fastballs to his pull side. Delgado is an electric athlete for a little 5-foot-7 guy. He has ambush power to his pull side, and unbelievable range and arm strength on defense (though his hands are less consistent). This guy will turn inaccurate throws into his own highlight reel plays by finding a way to make a great tag or an acrobatic way to touch the bag. He’s an athletic fit at shortstop and could be very good there if he can refine his hands over time.

Mueth, who signed for just shy of $1.8 million rather than go to Ole Miss, entered 2024 as a prospect who former contributor Travis Ice and I thought had a chance to really pop. Though he pitched pretty well on the complex roster, Mueth’s control backed up after he was promoted to Bradenton and he walked 22.4% of opponents across his final seven starts.

A lanky, 6-foot-6 low-slot righty in the Tanner Houck mold, Mueth will get into the mid-90s with Bootsy Collins-level sidearm funk. His low release creates uphill angle, and sometimes 20 inches of horizontal movement on his heater. When Mueth is locating, he is a nightmare for right-handed hitters, but his long arm circle and inconsistent release create relief risk, perhaps even relief probability. He also lacks feel for both of his secondaries, and his slider and changeup often vary drastically in their quality from pitch-to-pitch. The slider is a short 82-86 mph breaker that tends to finish high, like a long cutter. His changeup will flash bat-missing fade at its best, but it also often lacks substantial movement. Despite this, both of Mueth’s secondaries generated plus miss rates in 2024 because his delivery is so difficult to parse. It’s worth it for the Pirates to continue developing Mueth as a starter in case things click the way they eventually did for Houck, which didn’t really happen until his mid-20s. Realistically, Mueth (who hopefully will throw harder in relief) is going to be a nasty reliever down the road. A good 2025 season for him would involve him keeping his walk rate close to 10% and pitching well enough to earn a promotion to Greensboro by the end of the year. He’s probably still three or four years away from the bigs.

Navarro is a power pitching lefty who looks much bigger than his listed 6-feet, 178 pounds. His fastball already sits pretty comfortably in the mid-90s and peaks above, with 20 inches of vertical movement from a roughly average release height. He’s also bending in a power breaking ball in the low-80s. DSL hitters couldn’t touch either of them in 2024, and Navarro struck out 37 batters in 24 innings. He also walked 21, and he obviously needs to improve his control if he’s going to be a good big league pitcher, but he has the two-pitch foundation of a late-inning reliever.

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. 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. Chen began his career with 26 consecutive walk-free innings in the 2021 Florida Complex League, and then had nearly identical rate stats in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, with a 24.5% strikeout rate and 8.5% walk rate. He threw a career-high 134 innings in 2024 at Altoona, but his strikeout rate regressed. Chen’s velocity was also down a tad (in the 90-91 mph range), but it was back up again to start 2025 as Chen pitched for Taiwan in WBC qualifier action. He was up to 95 there and working with his usual well-commanded splitter and old school mid-70s curveball. He still looks like a fifth or sixth starter who’ll play a valuable spot starter role upon his debut and could potentially grow into a no. 4/5 starter if his command ascends to a special level.

Perachi had some of the best single-game statlines you’ll ever see while he was at Division-III Salve Regina (they’re the Seahawks and have a 70-grade logo), including a one-hit, 16 strikeout start and an eight-inning, 17 strikeout jawn. He’s had a fair amount of success as a swingman in two minor league seasons; in 2024, he K’d 121 batters in 114.2 innings and carried a 3.53 ERA between High- and Double-A. Perachi is very deceptive and hides the ball behind his head until it suddenly appears upon release. His arm action looks like a beautiful spiral staircase as it unfurls, and it helps him generate enough riding life for his fastball to play near average even though it only sits 92. Perachi’s slider is his best secondary pitch. It sits 81-85 mph and has tight, two-plane movement. He backs that up with a mid-70s curveball and the occasional changeup, the latter of which needs to develop some of Perachi is going to be more than just a spot starter, which is how he’s currently projected here.

Caro slashed .310/.440/.504 during the 2023 DSL season and .292/.399/.416 in 2024, ending with a shot of espresso on the Bradenton roster. He is incredibly fun to watch swing, as he takes full-body hacks that produce pretty good power for a hitter his age and size. All of that effort sometimes causes him to pull off of breaking balls, but so far that hasn’t resulted in him whiffing excessively, and Caro’s ability to parse balls and strikes is very precocious; his chase rates are a little more than a full standard deviation better than average. Caro’s best defensive position is second base, but he’s a plus athlete who will probably be able to play several other spots at maturity. There’s a non-zero chance he grows into enough arm for shortstop, and he runs well enough to give center field a try, too. Currently a fun low-level prospect to monitor, Caro projects as a down-the-road utilityman.

A cold weather bat from a Wisconsin high school, Rynders was signed away from a Kent State commitment for just shy of $650,000. He has a smooth left-handed swing and took a great BP at the Draft Combine, where he showed a good looking swing and above-average raw power for his age. Rynders has a shot to stay on the dirt, but it’ll likely be at third base if that happens and there’s a chance he has to move to the outfield. Either way, the lefty-hitting offensive profile is the carrying trait here, and Rynder is a nice mid-six figure signee to monitor this summer.

Siani’s swing changed pretty substantially in 2024. His stance was way more upright to start and his bat path has been altered to help make Siani better able to contact pitches at the top of the strike zone. His overall contact rates took a leap from 2023 (64% overall, 73% in the zone) to 2024 (74% and 84%, respectively) seemingly thanks to these changes. Siani also became more aggressive and chased more often, especially with two strikes. He slashed .265/.338/.400 in a season spent mostly at Double-A Altoona. He’s still not a great defensive outfielder and would be limited to the corner spots on a big league roster due to poor feel. Siani doesn’t have prototypical corner power, but if he can sustain this level of contact, he’ll live on the bottom of the 40-man roster as an above-replacement player.

Plaz is a strikeout-prone catcher with above-average power and a plus arm. He struggled in limited action on the complex in 2023, and then rebounded in 2024 with a .207/.302/.438 line and 15 bombs at Bradenton. Plaz is a maxed-out 5-foot-11 and isn’t likely to grow into any more power, but he already has pretty good pop for a catcher. Whether or not he’ll actually be able to get to it as he climbs the minors is another matter. His swing is bottom-hand dominant and pretty long for a guy his size, plus he’s fairly chase-prone. He needs to improve as a pitch framer, but Plaz’s arm strength is easily plus, and it would probably play better if his exchange were clean more often. He currently looks like a developmental second or third catcher.

Bidois is a wild Australian relief prospect with mid-90s fastball velocity and really nasty breaking stuff. He struck out 33.3% of opposing batters in 30.2 innings of work in a 2024 season interrupted by injury, then went to the Arizona Fall League and walked more than a batter per inning. Bidois’ fastball plays down a bit because it’s too often in hittable locations, but his panoply of breaking balls was almost untouchable. His high-altitude release point creates extreme downhill angle on all of his breakers, some of which are upper-80s cutter/sliders with hellacious late movement. Bidois’ breaking pitches generated a combined miss rate north of 60% in 2024, which is unreal. He is not a reliable enough strike-thrower to assume those pitches will continue to play to that level, but they’re nasty enough to carry Bidois to a lower-leverage role.

There were stretches at BYU when Nielson was throwing very hard, and though his velocity has settled into an average range, he’s had mid-minors success and has the look of a lower-leverage lefty reliever. He posted a 29.4% combined strikeout rate at High- and Double-A in 2024 on the back of an excellent low-80s, 2,800 rpm curveball, which has enough depth to be a workable weapon against righties. But Nielson’s three-quarters slot and the crossfire angle created by his stride direction give lefties an especially uncomfortable look because everything he throws starts behind them. His fastball can touch as high as 96 mph and sits in the 92-95 mph range with solid carry, especially when elevated, and he looks confident attacking hitters with his heater in the zone. He’s on track to debut in 2026.

Woods pitched out of Georgia’s bullpen as an underclassman and became their Friday night guy as a junior before he was shut down toward the end of the 2023 season with biceps tendinitis. Deployed exclusively as a reliever in pro ball, though often for more than one inning, Woods has the look of a fair lefty reliever thanks mostly to his above-average slider. He split 2024 between High- and Double-A, combining to strike out 27.8% of opposing batters. Woods’ delivery is gorgeous and features a cross-bodied stride and lovely vertical arm stroke, though he tends to pronate over top of the baseball on release and generate more sink than ride. His slider, usually in the 81-84 mph range, has typical two-plane movement, 10-to-5 on the clock face. It generated a 40% miss rate in 2024. Neither pitch is so nasty that Woods is ticketed for late-inning relief, and his fastball movement probably needs polish if he’s going to be an on-roster middle inning guy, but right now he’s a pretty stable up/down option who is looming in the upper levels.