Pittsburgh Pirates 2021: Three Young Prospects to Watch This Season

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a handful of prospects in their farm system who are 20-years-old or younger that have a high ceiling. Let’s take a look at three of these prospects that fans should be focusing on during the 2021 minor league season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates arguably have one of the top farm systems in all of baseball. They have high-end young talents like Nick Gonzales, Quinn Priester and Ke’Bryan Hayes, but the system has depth and talent throughout it. They have the most 40 or higher future value grade prospects than any other system FanGraphs has ranked so far.

However, many of their youngest prospects are ranked lower than they’ll probably end up. That’s normal for extremely young prospects. Not very many late teen professional ballplayers rank among the best prospects in the entire sport. However, by the end of 2021, they could climb the ranks and eventually put themselves into top 100 prospect watch.

Today, we will take a look at a few prospects who are 20-years-old or younger who have the best chance of reaching the top 100 or borderline top 100 status in the very near future and possibly by the end of this season. The Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of these prospects, so let’s get into our first player.

Outfielder Rodolfo Nolasco

Rodolfo Nolasco was one of the 2018 international signings by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Nolasco’s first taste of professional action was very strong. Through 225 plate appearances in the Dominican Summer League in 2019 Nolasco put up a .302/.373/.472 line with 5 home runs and 13 doubles.

Nolasco only walked at a 7.1% rate but went down on strikes in just 11.7% of all his plate appearances. Nolasco showed some decent power with a .171 isolated slugging percentage as well. All told, the outfield prospect had a .405 wOBA and 133 wRC+.

Nolasco has high power potential. He’s only 19-years-old, but has a 6’1″, 175-pound frame. He also had an outstanding 89 MPH exit velocity and a 46% hard-hit rate. Just for reference, a 47% hard-hit rate in 2020 would rank among the top 25 batters at the major league level. However, his overall numbers could have looked better had it not been for terrible batted ball rates. His line drive percentage was just 15.7%, meanwhile, he had a 57.6% ground ball rate.

His future will be a corner outfielder spot but his bat will play at either left field or right field. He’s only considered a 50-grade runner now and by the time he fills out, he’s only projected to be a 40-grade runner. However, he can hold his own with the glove and has a strong enough arm to remain a corner outfielder.

Pitcher Jared Jones

The Pittsburgh Pirates selected Jared Jones with their second-round pick in the 2020 MLB Draft. Jones was a high school level pick, coming out of La Mirada High School in California. Jones will turn 20 in August and was drafted at 18-years-old.

Jones has a strong three-pitch mix. He has a fastball which could be an elite-level offering shortly. His four-seam fastball comes in the upper-90s, around 96-97 MPH with some tail. However, he topped out at 99 MPH. Both FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline see this as a 60-grade offering.

His breaking pitch is a slider, which he throws at two different speeds with different break. His mid-70s slider is more of a slurve, but his low-80s slider is a version with much harder and sharper break. Overall, he’s seen to have a 55-grade slider by Pipeline, while FanGraphs sees it as a 60-grade offering. His final offering is a changeup. Although it’s not his go-to pitch, it’s a third offering that he can throw to an average degree. FanGraphs also grades out a curveball for Jones, however, this grade may be for his slurve-like offering.

Jones is still fairly young. It would be fun to see him be able to differentiate his hard slider and slurve into a slider and curveball, but he first needs to work on his ability to command his offerings and control the strike zone. His MLB Pipeline states that his command, at best, is inconsistent. His control only has a 40-grade on MLB Pipeline, meanwhile, his command on FanGraphs is seen as a 35-grade tool.

If Jones can get over his mild control issue you’re looking at an extremely talented pitcher. Jones has ace-like stuff. A right-handed starter who throws in the upper-90s, while having a well above-average slider, and will occasionally throw a slurve and changeup, gives him an ace’s arsenal. It’ll just depend if he can refine it to truly weaponize it.