3 sleeper Pirates prospects nobody is talking about ahead of Opening Day

1. Reinold Navarro

Another lefty that hasn’t gotten much attention is Reinold Navarro. The Pirates signed Navarro out of the Dominican Republic last winter as part of their international class. At just 17 years old, he might have some of the best stuff any left-hander in the Pirates’ system, but while he comes with an extremely high ceiling, there is some risk in his game.

Let’s first start with the positives in his Dominican Summer League performance. Navarro pitched 24.1 innings, posting a 3.38 ERA. He induced ground balls at a hefty 50% rate, helping him limit batters to just a single home run. Navarro also struck out 31.9% of his opponents, making him just one of 21 DSL pitchers with a K% over 30% and a grounder rate over 50% in 20+ innings of work.

Now, here’s the downside. Navarro walked 18.1% of the batters he faced. For what it’s worth, walks are a common sight at the DSL level. The league average free pass percentage across the entire league in 2024 was 14%, so take Navarro's elevated number with a grain of salt. Still, even in a league where command issues are the norm, he had the 87th-highest BB% among the 542 pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched.

Despite only being in his age-17 campaign in 2024, Navarro was already sitting in the mid-90s. Meanwhile, his slider comes in around the low-80s. Baseball America named his fastball as the best fastball among the DSL All-Stars last July. His stuff isn’t in question, but his ability to locate consistently is.

But it’s not as if Navarro doesn’t have time to sharpen his command up. He’ll be 18 for the entirety of the 2025 campaign. There aren’t very many teen pitchers who are already hitting the upper 90s consistently, let alone left-handed ones. Navarro only appears on FanGraphs’ top Pirates prospect list, but does not appear on either Baseball America or MLB Pipeline’s lists. 2025 could easily change that.