Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Hudson Head Is Starting To Heat Up

After a slow start to his 2021 season, Pittsburgh Pirates outfield prospect Hudson Head is starting to heat up.

The Pittsburgh Pirates made three notable trades over this past offseason. One of which was sending Joe Musgrove to the San Diego Padres as part of a three-team trade. The Pittsburgh Pirates ended up getting a five-player prospect haul for the talented right-hander. The headliner of the deal, outfielder Hudson Head, got off to a slow start to the season but has started to heat up in the past few weeks.

Head started his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates batting just .167/.268/.167 through his first 9 games and 36 plate appearances of the season. However, since May 16th, he’s been hitting for an outstanding .259/.500/.556 line across his last 27 trips to the plate. This includes 11 walks and 4 extra-base hits.

It’s a promising development for Head as he was expected to be one of the team’s most notable prospects throughout the entire system. Obviously, it’s a small sample size. He’s stepped to the plate just 81 times this season, but he’s drawing walks at an exceptional rate while showing off some decent power.

The 20-year-old was originally a third-round draft pick by the Padres in 2019, but he could have easily gone much earlier in the draft. Head was considered a highly athletic high school outfielder with five-tool potential.

He showed off some of this potential in 2019. Throughout his first 141 plate appearances with the Padres’ Rookie-Ball affiliate, the outfielder batted .283/.383/.417 with a .375 wOBA and 119 wRC+. Although his game power wasn’t on full display, Head still had an 89 MPH exit velocity. Head has improved his line drive rate from 18.2% in 2019 to 21.1% this season. Though this has come at the expense of hitting more ground balls.

The athletic outfielder has walked at an 18.5% rate this year, a 7.9% increase from his last season. But his strikeout rate has ballooned to 29.6%, compared to just 20.6% in 2019. Though it is promising he’s drawn more walks than going down on strike three during his last handful of games.

Head has a 60-future grade hit tool and a 45-future grade game power tool. But he has a decent amount of overall power potential, reflected in his 55-future grade raw power tool. He’s considered a well-above-average runner (60-speed grade) and fielder (55-future fielding and arm grade). So far, he’s seen time at all three outfield positions, but he’s mainly considered a centerfielder. Head is still pretty young and has a projectable 6’1”, 180-pound frame. His current frame is comparable to Alex Bregman and Francisco Lindor when they were in their age-20 season.

Not every player is going to shake off the rust from missing an entire minor league season as some prospects have. For some, it’s going to take a while before they get fully back into the swing of things. Head’s ice-cold start may have just been his way of coming back from no minor league season.