Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Sleeper Picks to Watch in 2024

Don't sleep on these three Pittsburgh Pirates players. They have the potential to make an impact for the team this season.

A sleeper player is described as a player who is “generally undervalued but carries significant upside.” The Pittsburgh Pirates definitely have a handful of these kinds of players on their roster. They have a handful of different players who have the potential to break out or rebound next year based on some of their underlying numbers or based on improvements they made in the second half of the season or later.

These are the kinds of players that we will be looking at today. Whether they showed some improvements in 2023 or something that could make them a standout player in 2024 but were generally glossed over by Pirates fans or the greater baseball world, they will be on today’s list.

Joshua Palacios

Joshua Palacios captured the hearts of many Pirates fans in 2023 with his consistent, incredibly clutch hits. In late and close games, Palacios had 13 hits, nearly all of which were extra-base hits (four home runs and doubles, one triple), six walks, and just eight strikeouts in 45 plate appearances. Palacios mostly served as a 4th outfielder for the team during the second half of the season.

Palacios’ overall line was not impressive. He only batted .209/.279/.413 with a .297 wOBA, and 83 wRC+. On the plus side, he did hit for above-average power, hitting ten homers in 264 plate appearances with an above-average 21.2% strikeout rate. But he also struggled to draw walks with a 4.5% walk rate, leading to a BB:K ratio of 0.21. Palacios did show off good power with a 91.3 MPH exit velocity, 10.3% barrel rate, and 45.4% hard-hit rate. His 7.7-degree launch angle, however, was a tad low.

Baseball Savant was very optimistic about Palacios’ overall performance. He had an expected .259/.318/.438 triple-slash and .318 xwOBA. That comes out to a .758 OPS. That’s comparable production to Eddie Rosario, Spencer Torkelson, or J.T. Realmuto. The league average triple-slash, OPS and wOBA was .248/.320/.414, .734, and .318. That would make him an average to slightly above league-average batter in most regards.

According to Baseball Savant and Statcast, Palacios’ batted ball profile is very similar to four players from 2023: Michael Harris II, Eloy Jimenez, Ryan O’Hearn, and Freddy Fermin (they do include a fifth comparison in Brendan Rogers, but he received less than 200 plate appearances, which is why I left him off). These four batters combined for a .284/.323/.465 slash (OPS of .788).

The most similar of these four batters in 2023 was Harris II. Harris’ BB:K ratio was 0.25 while carrying a 90.9 MPH exit velocity, 48.5% hard-hit rate, 7.6-degree launch angle, and 10% barrel rate. Those are very similar to Palacios’ 0.21 K:BB ratio, 91.3 exit velo, 45.4% hard-hit rate, 7.7 degree launch angle, and 9.8% barrel rate. Harris, of course, was a very productive batter in 2023 with a .293/.331/.477 slashline, .345 wOBA, and 113 wRC+.

Sure, Palacios will likely open the year as the team’s fourth outfielder, but I would not be surprised if he played well enough to at least earn a semi-regular role. He does a lot of things similar to batters who had good seasons last year. If he hits anything like his potential suggests, you are looking at arguably the most underrated breakout candidate of 2024.

Rowdy Tellez

Rowdy Tellez showed a ton of potential in 2022. He hit 35 home runs, had a 10.4% walk rate, only struck out 20.2% of the time, and had a 110 wRC+. But there was definitely hope he could improve upon that. He had just a .215 batting average on balls in play and was one of the most shifted on players in 2022. But with the new rules in place, he looked primed to build upon his good numbers from ‘22.

Tellez looked good through the first two months of the year. In 184 plate appearances in April and May, the first baseman was batting .244/.332/.494 with a .347 wOBA and 118 wRC+. Tellez was starting to benefit from the new shift rules as his BABIP went from just .215 to .255. His isolated slugging percentage had also risen to .250. Tellez’s strikeout rate may have taken a step back to 23.3%, but his walk rate also rose to 12.2%.

Tellez then fell off hard in June, collecting just 15 hits in 95 plate appearances with five walks. He then appeared in three games in July before hitting the injury list with a forearm injury. Tellez then suffered a finger fracture in mid-July, right when he was scheduled to return, which kept him out until mid/late August. Although he would return in August, he never got back on track, posting a 76 wRC+ through his final 63 plate appearances.

I think you can chalk up most, if not all, of Tellez’s struggles to his forearm injury. It’s too coincidental that he started to struggle the month before landing on the IL. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the Tellez we saw in April and May of last year. But because of how much he struggled after May, I think many are overlooking the upside he comes with.