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

OF/1B Matt Gorski

Matt Gorski was a second-round pick by the Pirates in the 2019 draft. Since then, he’s stuck around the Pirates’ system, spending most of the last three seasons at Triple-A Indianapolis. Gorski is a good defender with above-average speed and power potential, but the swing and miss in his game has consistently prevented him from taking the next step forward.

Last year, Gorski turned in a .257/.319/.522 triple-slash, .359 wOBA, and 110 wRC+. Gorski showed off power like he always does and had 25 home runs in 433 plate appearances and a .265 isolated slugging percentage, the seventh-highest ISO of any International League batter with at least 300 plate appearances. But he had a sub-par 8.8% walk rate and an even worse 28.6% strikeout percentage.

Gorski is off to a solid start to 2025. He has a dozen hits in 49 plate appearances. Five of those hits have gone for extra bases, with four doubles and a home run. Gorski has surprisingly only struck out a dozen times but only has five walks. This has amounted to a .279/.327/.442 triple-slash, and 106 wRC+ with a .345 wOBA. However, the Statcast metrics show some interesting changes in Gorski’s game.

Gorski has a whiff rate of 29.5%. That may not seem good, but last season, this number sat at 37.3%. Plus, while it may still be worse than the average whiff% at Triple-A this year, it is only worse by 1.1%(28.4% is average). Gorski has cut his whiff rate down while also keeping his raw power. His exit velocity sits at 95.2 MPH, and his barrel percentage is 18.2%. He currently ranks ninth in exit velocity, 16th in barrel rate, 37th in xSLG% (.486), and 39th in xwOBA, along with having the 42nd largest difference between his wOBA and xwOBA among the 292 Triple-A hitters with at least 30 plate appearances so far this season.