3 Pirates position player prospects who took important steps forward in 2024

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ system is known for its pitching talent. MLB Pipeline recently ranked their system as the game's best when it comes to pitching. But with all the arms in the system, many position players have gotten overlooked this year. It might not be the strongest part of the farm, but the team certainly still has some potential future up-and-coming hitters.

2024's minor league season is nearly complete; both A-Ball (Bradenton) and High-A (Greensboro) regular seasons have ended, while Double-A and Triple-A are seeing their campaigns finish up. Some of the position player prospects in the Pirates’ system have taken steps forward this year and ended the season with a brighter outlook than before.

Nick Yorke

Nick Yorke was once a first-round draft pick. He was taken 17th overall by the Boston Red Sox in 2020 and was a consensus top-100 prospect going into 2022. But after a poor ‘22 season, struggling to keep strikeouts down in 2023, and a tough start to this year, Yorke looked like he may have stalled out. But after getting promoted to Triple-A, he’s been on fire, making some significant improvements to his game in both Boston and Pittsburgh's systems.

Yorke has 285 plate appearances between the Red Sox’s and Pirates’ Triple-A teams, batting .337/.419/.509 with a .413 wOBA and 144 wRC+. The infield prospect is striking out just 18.3% of the time while walking at an 11.6% clip. Yorke has hit for a respectable amount of power with a .172 isolated slugging percentage and eight home runs.

The numbers under the hood show that Yorke is doing a lot of things right. His exit velocity is 91.4 MPH, and he is only swinging and missing 20.2% of the time. Many batters do not swing and miss that infrequently while hitting the ball that hard. He has the best exit velocity of any minor leaguer with as low of a whiff rate as he does (min. 250 plate appearances). Since getting to the Pirates, he has cut that down below 20%.

Yorke keeping his strikeouts under control is a big development. In 2022 and 2023, he struck out about a quarter of the time. 2021 was the last season he struck out less than 20% of the time, and he never went above High-A ball. On top of that, Yorke has shown more versatility than ever before. The only positions he has not played an inning at are first base, catcher, and pitcher.

The Pirates will need to add Yorke to the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft this offseason, so Yorke could definitely be in consideration for the second base job next year. Even if he can’t secure the starting job, he has the potential to be a valuable utility man for the Pirates.