Pittsburgh Pirates: High-A Roster Projected to be Strong

The Pittsburgh Pirates have one of baseball’s best farm systems and the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers are set to benefit from that this season

The minor league season is just around the corner. The season was delayed for a month, but now the show’s getting on the road and the Pittsburgh Pirates have announced some of the notable players who made the rosters of their minor league affiliates.

The strongest batch of players is likely going to be at High-A Greensboro. Although nothing is official, Jason Mackey tweeted that the following prospects are likely to start the season at their High-A affiliate:

The numbers beside the player’s names represent their team ranking on Baseball America’s Pirate organizational top prospect list. This is, obviously, a very impressive list of players and it isn’t even the complete list. Potentially, more notable prospects could join these four.

Nick Gonzales and Quinn Priester are the two most notable prospects among this group. Both were first-round picks by the Pittsburgh Pirates with Gonzales being drafted in 2020 and Priester coming out of high school in 2019. Gonzales, who was seen as one of the best pure hitters in the 2020 draft, had an OBP and wOBA above .500, and more walks than strikeouts in his amature career. He also worked on his defense over this past offseason with one of the Bucs’ greatest defensive infielders of all-time, Jack Wilson. If Gonzales can perfect his fielding, he could be a borderline five-tool player.

Priester on the other hand received a whole lot of praise this past offseason. He’s quite possibly the most improved prospect in all of baseball who didn’t appear in the Major Leagues going into 2021. Priester is considered the 52nd best prospect according to MLB Pipeline and 45th best prospect in baseball by FanGraphs’ measurement. Pretty impressive to go from a borderline top 100 guy to a borderline consensus top 50 prospect in just one year despite not having a minor league season. Most of the praise Priester received was based on his work in instructionals where he looked outstanding.

Shortstop Liover Peguero will likely join Gonzales to form a formidable middle-infield combo. Peguero joined the Pirate organization in the 2019-2020 offseason as the headliner in the Starling Marte trade. Like Gonzales, many see a potential five-tool player in Peguero. He’s projected to have a 60-grade hit tool, plus glove with an above average arm, and can cover a decent bit of ground with his above average speed. Power is the only real question when it comes to Peguero. However, he had a 90 MPH exit velo, 42% hard hit rate in 2019 and added some bulk over the past year. Peguero is a borderline top 100 prospect. FanGraphs ranks him at 110, but could easily break into their top 100 before the end of the 2021 season if he performs well and once prospects graduate rookie status.

Last but not least is right-hander Tahnaj Thomas. Thomas is an electric young pitcher the Pittsburgh Pirates received with Erik Gonzalez from the Cleveland Indians in exchange for Jordan Luplow and Max Moroff. The soon-to-be 22-year-old (he will turn 22 in mid-June) has a fastball that can reach into the triple digits and has a plus breaking ball to go along with it. He also showed greatly improved control in 2019 with the team’s rookie-ball affiliate walking just 7% of the batters he faced compared to a 16.5% rate before the deal. The development of his change-up could be the difference of him being a long term rotation arm or shutdown closer. However, he’s barely pitched 100 innings in his pro career and is seen as a top 100 prospect by FanGraphs.

Overall, these four could easily be among the top 100 prospects in all of baseball before the end of the season. Priester and Gonzales are already considered top 50 prospects by many sources, however Peguero and Thomas could easily reach that status as well. It just goes to show how much talent the Pittsburgh Pirates have in the system currently. All I will say is good luck to the Greensboro Grasshoppers opponents. They’re going to have a rough time facing such a tough and talented roster.