Pittsburgh Pirates: MLB Pipeline Ranks Ke’Bryan Hayes’ Rookie Season

One of the few bright spots this season for the Pittsburgh Pirates came when they promoted their top hitting prospect.  From his first game he has proven that he belongs in the Big Leagues.

When the Pittsburgh Pirates called up their top hitting prospect in Ke’Bryan Hayes, many knew that he would be a good third baseman.  Hayes has been one of the best third baseman in all of professional baseball and has won the last three Minor League Gold Gloves.  However, there were questions about how good of a hitter Hayes would become.

Hayes has always had upside with the bat, hence why he was a first round pick back in 2015.  Until this year, however, Hayes has never really torn the cover off of the ball.  His overall minor league numbers are .279/.354/.399 with 25 home runs across 461 games.  Good, but not lineup changing numbers.

Hayes must have worked hard in the offseason to make some changes.  His power has always been there, but he was hitting a lot of ground balls in the minors.  Hayes has worked hard on swinging at a better attack angle which in turn has led to the jump in power the Pittsburgh Pirates saw at the end of the season.  Hayes impressed a lot of people across baseball during his 24 game showcase, and actually ranked pretty high on MLB Pipeline’s list of “Top 25 Rookies in 2020”.  Jonathan Mayo came up with the list, placing Hayes at sixth overall:

6) Ke’Bryan Hayes, 3B, Pirates.376/.442/.682, 24 G, 5 HR, 17 R, 11 RBIsIt was quite a month for Hayes, who made his big league debut on Sept. 1 but still managed to finish second in total bases among all rookie third basemen. He never went more than one game without at least one hit, all while playing plus defense.

This is incredible to see.  Hayes played essentially just one-third of the season and still put himself in the conversation for one of the top rookie performers.  No doubt his performance over the last month deserved recognition, but it really is surprising to see him be ranked in front of so many other players who had big impacts for their teams for a much longer time.

The only players that were ranked in front of Hayes were American League outfielders Kyle Lewis and Luis Robert and National Leaguer rookies Jake Cronenworth, Devin Williams, and Tony Gonsolin.  Those players all pretty much started their 2020 seasons with the big league clubs and performed at a high level, so all three make sense as to why they are ranked where they are on the list.  Overall, if Hayes would have played in more games, then there would have been little doubt who would sit at the top of this list.  For now, let’s just hope he can continue to play the way he did this year in 2021.