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

C/1B Axiel Plaz

Axiel Plaz was one of the Pirates’ biggest international signings in January 2022. He burst onto the scene in 2022, slugging over .700 in the Dominican Summer League. The backstop spent most of his 2024 season at A-Ball Bradenton, where he had some decent numbers, albeit with some red flags, but showed off enough talent to become a top 30 Pirates prospect, per both MLB Pipeline and Baseball America.

It was only 281 plate appearances, but Plaz slashed .207/.302/.438 with a .345 wOBA and 108 wRC+. One thing Plaz made sure to show off was his power. He hit 15 home runs with an isolated slugging percentage of .231. That was the sixth-highest ISO of any A-Ball hitter in 2024, with at least 250 plate appearances. While he had a low batting average, some of that could be chalked up to a batting average on balls in play of just .235. Plaz walked in 11.8% of his trips to the plate but struck out around 30% of the time with a 29.8% K%. Plaz was still extremely young, in just his age-18 campaign, and was the third youngest batter with at least 200 plate appearances.

Plaz is still one of the youngest batters at A-Ball, just the 12th youngest player with double-digit trips to the plate. He’s definitely not batting poorly, slashing .405/.476/.486 with a .472 wOBA and 168 wRC+ in 49 plate appearances. Plaz hasn’t hit a home run yet and has only drawn a pair of walks, but has three doubles and just seven strikeouts.

Plaz has some of the best raw power of any batter at his level. Only 18 hitters have seen at least 100 pitches with a barrel rate of at least 10% (Plaz sits at 10% exactly). But Plaz has an extremely high 95.2 MPH exit velocity, the second-best among hitters who have seen 100+ pitches. There is still the issue of his 30% whiff rate, but that’s about league average for A-Ball (29.9% is the league average), and considering how young he is, it’s impressive for him to have even an average mark in this category of hitting.