Pittsburgh Pirates Prospect Profile: Outfielder Jasiah Dixon

In today’s player profile we will take a look at the Pittsburgh Pirates 2019 23rd round pick Jasiah Dixon. A very fast, raw hitter from California.

The 2019 draft class for the Pittsburgh Pirates is a very interesting one for me. The team, in my opinion, got some extremely high ceiling prospects in the draft’s later rounds. Some of those names include Cameron Junker, Jake Snider, and late round surprise Deion Walker. But the one player we will talk about today is a young man from California – outfielder Jasiah Dixon.

Dixon, by trade, is a center fielder. But due to the log jam in center field for the GCL Pirates, he moved around the outfield in 2019. When it was all said and done, he played the majority of his games in right field.

With FanGraphs rating his speed at a 70, it tells me he has the speed to burn for days and not get tired. To go along with his plus speed, he has shown a cannon for an arm. Despite his 190 pound frame, he can get the ball to home plate with ease and with surprising accuracy.

Now, when it comes to the bat, he is a bit raw. According to Eric Logenhagen of FanGraphs, there is potential there for a little bit of pop in his bat should he fill out and hone his swing in. In the batting cage, you can notice the majority of his balls were pulled into left field, and this even showed his first year in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization with a 56.5% pull rate. Something that might explain this is his lighting fast hands through the zone with quick hands like that you’re bound to pull the ball.

Now, to the business at hand, how did Dixon do with the GCL Pirates? To sum it up, he did very well in a small sample size. Dixon signed a month late, thus giving us only 22 games and 84 plate appearances to go off of. In those said 84 plate appearances Dixon posted a .329/.417/.425 slash line, eight stolen bases, and an impressively low 13.1% strikeout rate. One thing you have to remember is this is a very limited sample size, so do what you will with these stats.

In the advanced metrics department, he showed off some impressive numbers as well with a wOBA of .409, wRC+ of 146, an above-average wRAA of 4.8, and a 0.2 wSB. As we said before, Dixon pulls the ball quite a bit. Another thing he does a lot is hit the ball on the ground, posting a 57.1% ground ball rate in 2019. Which, for someone with plus speed, is ok by me. I’m often reminded of the movie “Major League,” where Wesley Snipe’s character had to do push ups every time he hit the ball into the air. As the old adage goes, speed kills.

His splits for the year showed much of the same for the two months he did play. In 23 plate appearances in July, he slashed a .429/.478/.619 and a 1.097 OPS. In August, he saw a dip in production and 38 more at bats than the previous month. He slashed .288/.393/.346 and a .740 OPS even though they weren’t eye-popping numbers, he remained above average and kept grinding to perfect his craft.

On the defensive side of the ball, Dixon was a solid player. With the majority of his starts coming in right field, he recorded 27 putouts and one assist. All together in the outfield, Dixon recorded 164 innings, 41 putouts, three assists, two double plays, and an excellent RF/9 of 2.55. In a log-jammed outfield with the GCL Pirates, you would really like to see what he could do with more innings.

Now, whether or not you take any merit with a limited sample size, new Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Ben Cherrington has a challenge ahead of him of where to place the speedster next year. With more opportunities and at bats, it would be intriguing to see what the young man can do. If Dixon can use his speed and defense as a weapon, regardless of what level he is at, he should perform just fine.