Pittsburgh Pirates Pirates: Termarr Johnson Could Become a Superstar

Termarr Johnson is only 19 years old and could make it to the majors by the time he is 22. When Johnson joins the Pittsburgh Pirates, he could be set to become MLB's next superstar player with many comparisons to a current superstar in Juan Soto.

You can compare Soto and Johnson in many types of play styles. While Johnson is a second baseman and Soto is an outfielder, both of them have an elite ability to walk a lot while being some of the best contact hitters. But both of them are also great home run hitters. Soto has way more power than Johnson, but he still projects to be able to hit around 20-25 home runs a season.

The 2023 Minor League season has seen a huge rise for Johnson. So far in 99 games, he's seen 1,999 pitches, barely missing his 2,000th pitch. But in this sample size, 880 of them were balls with 1,119 being strikes, which is a good ratio of 56% strikes. To compare, Soto has seen 2,569 in MLB this season, 1,140 of which were balls, making his ratio 55.5% Strikes, which is very similar. However, Johnson is still in the minors with plenty of development left.

Another category they are close in is Walks and Strikeouts. While Soto strikes out 19% of the time and walks 18.8% of the time, Johnson walks 21.9% of the time while striking out 24.2% of the time.

wOBA, which means weighted on-base average, is a statistic designed to measure a player's overall offensive contributions per plate appearance. In Low-A and High-A in 2023, Johnson has had a .414 wOBA and a .399 wOBA compared to Soto's 2023 .378.

In 2023, in 104 games at Low-A and High-A, Johnson has 18 home runs and 59 RBIs while batting .243. His elite walking ability with 100 walks boosts his on-base percentage to .421. While he has 100 walks in 2023, he only has 84 hits, which means he gets on base very often and even gets hit by pitches with 8 on the season.

OPS is a statistic that means on-base plus slugging to determine a player's hitting ability to walking ability, and in 2023, the league average OPS is .733, and Johnson, who still has much more to develop, is sitting at .860.

While he still won't reach the majors for probably 2-3 years depending on development, he could be up sooner, but he still has much to grow and could be better than Juan Soto or worse, but currently, he is the best comparison.

He was drafted in the same class as 1st overall pick Jackson Holliday and others like Brooks Lee, Zach Neto, and Justin Crawford, along with others who are really good contact hitters, but of all of those players, Scouts and analysts said that Johnson has the most potential and was the best pure hitter they've seen in years.