5 Pittsburgh Pirates prospects who are Statcast standouts to start 2025 season

Statcast has tracked every pitch, swing, batted ball, fielder, and runner since 2015 at the MLB level. Since 2021, the technology has been a part of most A-Ball and Triple-A parks, giving fans plenty of publicly available data to examine their team’s prospects. The Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of minor league players who are standing out early into the 2025 season. Some also have interesting Statcast metrics under the hood that can be found on Baseball Savant, indicating that a further breakout could be coming.

5 Pittsburgh Pirates prospects who've been early Statcast standouts

Bubba Chandler

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Pirates’ best pitching prospect, Bubba Chandler, has some standout Statcast metrics. Chandler had a phenomenal 2024 season, where he had a 3.08 ERA, 3.10 FIP, and 1.02 WHIP between Altoona and Indianapolis. His K% sat just above 30% at 30.9% and he had a sub-10% walk rate, sitting at 8.6%. On top of that, he only allowed home runs at an 0.68-per-9 ratio.

This performance earned Chandler some high regard from prospect rankings, with Baseball America going so far as to put him as baseball’s seventh-best prospect. Chandler has continued to show why he’s so highly regarded. In 10.1 innings at Triple-A to kick off 2025, he has only allowed two earned runs with 18 strikeouts. Chandler has still handed out five walks, but a slight uptick in walk rate is to be expected, given Triple-A uses the automatic strike zone.

But Chandler has been next to unhittable according to Statcast metrics. The talented young right-hander has induced a whopping 40.6% whiff rate. His called+swinging strike rate sat at 29.5% last season, but is now up to 38.2%. On the seemingly rare occasions batters make contact off of Chandler, they average just an 83 MPH exit velocity. But none of these numbers compare to his -2 degree launch angle he has held opponents to.

On top of that, Chandler has one of the best fastballs at Triple-A. The pitch averages 98.2 MPH, an uptick from last season when he averaged 96.8 MPH when he got sent to Indianapolis, and represents the seventh-highest fastball velo at Triple-A to start 2025. He is tied with Rico Garcia, a pitcher in the Mets’ organization, for the least amount of vertical ride at 10.1 inches, which gives the pitch the ‘rising fastball’ effect.