Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects Who Could Be Next to Get the Call

The Pittsburgh Pirates have made a handful of notable promotions this week, but who is the next prospect to get a call to the majors?

The Pittsburgh Pirates had an active week in getting players to the Major Leagues. On Sunday, they purchased the contract of right-handed reliever Yerry De Los Santos. On Tuesday, they selected outfielder Cal Mitchell’s contract while re-calling top pitching prospects Roansy Contreras.

The roster is slowly but surely starting to improve, and these three promotions are significant additions to the pitching staff and lineup. These three were arguably the most MLB ready players the Pirates had, so who’s the next big promotion.

The first answer everyone is going to go towards is Oneil Cruz. Since his slow start to the season, Cruz has put up an excellent three-week stretch. Going into Tuesday, Cruz was batting .255/.388/.491 with a .391 wOBA and 138 wRC+ since May 5th. The impressive part is that Cruz had a 16.4% walk and strikeout rate. Those are remarkable numbers for a guy who’s always put up about league average walk and strikeout rates throughout most of his minor league career.

But Cruz is a whole lot better than his numbers suggest. Although he’s been nearly 40% better than the league average batter, he has done this despite a .268 batting average on balls in play. Since arriving at the Pirate organization in 2017, he has a .346 mark. Even if he were sitting at .300 in this stretch, he’d probably have a 145+ wRC+.

If Cruz isn’t the next big promotion, then it might be Ji-Hwan Bae. Bae is currently hitting .286/.370/.468 with a .371 wOBA and 125 wRC+. He’s presently walking at a career-best 12.3% rate. Bae has always been a good contact hitter who draws walks, but he’s putting up power numbers that are unprecedented for him. Bae has a .183 isolated slugging percentage, the first time he’s ever put up anything over .135.

Bae has mainly played second base this year but has a handful of games in center field and recently started getting reps at shortstop again. He’s been on fire this month, having a .982 OPS, .429 wOBA, and 162 wRC+. Bae would obviously be a massive improvement over Josh VanMeter as the primary platoon option with Diego Castillo up the middle.

The Pittsburgh Pirates already called up their biggest, MLB ready right-handed starting pitching prospect and their most MLB ready right-handed relief pitching prospect. However, they could soon bring up another starting-capable right-hander, that being Cody Bolton.

We previously looked at how good Bolton has bounced back after missing two seasons of playing time, and it could make him the next pitcher to get a promotion. It’s only been 24.1 innings, but Bolton has a 3.33 ERA, 2.97 FIP, and 1.32 WHIP. He’s struck out over 30% of batters faced (31.4%) while having a 46% ground ball rate, leading to zero home runs allowed yet. The only downside is Bolton’s 12.7% walk rate. Though walks have never been a big issue for Bolton in the past, and he has a 10.9% rate in his last five outings.

Even with Contreras in the majors and taking a rotation spot, José Quintana providing quality innings for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and JT Brubaker and Zach Thompson showing a ton of promise in their last handful of starts, the Pirates still have little semblance of consistency in the five-hole. Mitch Keller recently made his first appearance out of the bullpen, working as a multi-inning arm after Wil Crowe’s 2 inning open.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have used Dillon Peters as a three-inning starter multiple times. It’s likely that the Pirates would call upon Max Kranick before Bolton, but he is currently on the minor league injured list.

The Pirates are already starting to see major roster improvements, and they’ll likely make another big promotion before the end of the month. The team has many prospects who are heating up, and it won’t be long before we start seeing some reinforcements to a roster that desperately needs it.