Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Taking a Line Drive Approach

Since taking over as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Ben Cherington is focusing on a line-drive approach when it comes to prospects and young players.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been rebuilding since the 2019 season ended. This was when they completely restructured the front office and coaching staff with the most prominent hirers being Ben Cherington as general manager, Derek Shelton as the new manager and Oscar Marin as the new pitching coach, among countless other moves.

With a completely new regime came a completely new way of thinking, developing and acquiring prospects, and helping players at the Major League level. We’ve already seen the new line of thinking has impacted the pitching staff at the major league level. Guys like Richard Rodríguez, Tyler Anderson, JT Brubaker, Sam Howard and Trevor Cahill are pitching well above what anyone could have expected.

However, on the position player side of things, there is a trend that can be noticed with many of the prospects the Pittsburgh Pirates are acquiring under the new regime. This includes players in the draft and trades. Aside from the average and plate discipline first approach similar to the Los Angeles Dodgers, he’s also using a more line drive approach with their prospects.

It makes sense, too. Line drives by far are the most productive form of a batted ball and it’s not even close. This season alone  batters have a .686 batting average and .893 slugging percentage on line drive hits. This has led to a .697 wOBA and 343 wRC+. Since batted ball data began being recorded in 2002, the lowest single-season batting average on line drives is .680. Meanwhile, the lowest wOBA and wRC+ on line drives are .672 and 331.

Even softly hit line drives are extremely productive. Batters are still hitting .684 with a .706 slugging, .614 wOBA and 300 wRC+ this year on soft line drives. The lowest single-season batting average on softly hit line drives is still an outstanding .629 mark in 2012, and the lowest wRC+ is 263, that being in 2006. So even when line drives have bad contact they’re still 163% better than the league average hitter.

Now compare this to fly balls and ground balls. Throughout a single season ground balls have never even been 50% worse than league average. The highest wRC+ ground balls have generated is a 35 mark. The highest batting average is just .241 and the isolated slugging percentage (which is just slugging percentage minus batting average) has never reached .050.

Fly balls are usually productive but are no match for a line drive. Since 2015, batters have averaged a wRC+ of at least 130. However, fly balls have never fallen for a hit more than 25.4% of the time, with the highest batting average mark coming in 2019.

This rings true among the league leaders in line drive rate. Since 2002 among players with at least 2500 trips to the plate, the top 5 line drive rate leaders are Freddie Freeman, Mark Lorretta, Whit Merrifield, Joey Votto and Nick Castellanos. All five have a career wRC+ above 100 or league average. Since 2018, the leaders with at least 1000 plate appearances include Freeman, Merrifield, Omar Narvaez, Chris Taylor, and Joey Votto. Again, neither of the five have a wRC+ below 100. This year, Luis Robert, Jose Altuve, Jed Lowrie, Luis Arraez, and Colin Moran are the leaders in LD%. The lowest wRC+ among them? Altuve at 115.

Looking through the minor league system the Pittsburgh Pirates have very few big, fly ball or bust kind of power hitters. The only two that could fit that mold are first base prospect Mason Martin and shortstop prospect Oneil Cruz, two prospects acquired during the Neal Huntington Era. While that’s not to say the Pittsburgh Pirates don’t have any more prospects with no home run power, that kind of power isn’t necessarily their best tool when it comes to hitting.

Take a look at the players the Pittsburgh Pirates received in their three big trades this off-season. Endy Rodriguez, Maikol Escotto, Canaan Smith-Njigba and Hudson Head all had roughly average or better line drive rates in 2019 (for reference, the average line drive rate has sat between 18%-22% since it was recorded and the 2021 average is 20.9%). All four also had well above average 2019 seasons. Among them, Hudson Head had the lowest wRC+. Even then, he had a very solid 119 mark.

Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero are also more line drive than home run hitters. Currently, Gonzales has a 25% line drive rate early into 2021. He also has a 181 wRC+. Peguero had an identical line drive rate to Gonzales but has an eye popping 224 wRC+. Granted, these are small sample sizes, but Peguero looked good in 2019 with the Diamondback farm system while having a line drive rate around average. Gonzales on the other hand hit a ton of home runs in college, but also a ton of doubles. During his time in the Cape Cod League in 2019, he had 14 doubles in just 185 plate appearances. That’s a rate of 45 over 600 plate appearances.

Most of these guys, more so the likes of Gonzales, Escotto, and Smith-Njigba, have the potential to be 20-25+ home run hitters. Some of those line drives will turn into home runs if they get into it. In the end, a home run, whether it’s a wall scraper or a 450-foot blast, is still worth the same.

I’m not in the war room of different front offices and I can’t say what they value and what they don’t value specifically aside from the basic info we already know. However, as an outsider looking in, there seems to be a heavy emphasis on fly balls, the home run, and launch angle. All three are still important, especially launch angle because that can still tell us who is a good line drive hitter and who is not, but there seems to be less value put on driving the gaps, hitting line drives, and racking up doubles rather than home runs.

However, if what I am saying rings true, then it’s a very smart move by Cherington. The Pittsburgh Pirates obviously aren’t a big market team, so they have to find ways to stay ahead of the rest of the MLB. If the rest of the league isn’t fully valuing something very productive, then he needs to be taking advantage of that. So far, it looks like that’s what he is doing.

All of the prospects he has acquired so far are more line drive hitters than power hitters. You don’t need every batter in the lineup to be a 35-40 home run hitter. Guys like Cruz and Martin will drive in most of the runs, but it shouldn’t be solely their responsibility to get the extra-base hits.

Hitters that are likely part of the long-term future such as Colin Moran, Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Gonzales, Peguero, Travis Swaggerty, Smith-Njigba, Rodriguez, Head, Escotto, and Alexander Mojica all have the potential to be 30-40 doubles a season type hitters. Combined with the 30-40 home run potential with Martin and Cruz, and the future of the Pirate lineup could be an extremely deadly 1-9.