Pittsburgh Pirates: Why You Shouldn't Worry Abou These Top Prospects

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Two of the Pittsburgh Pirates top prospects are struggling right now, but fan should not be worried about them

Panicking over prospects is something baseball fans do. A top prospect reaches a new level, doesn't automatically take off, and fans are ready to declare him a bust. Some of the Pittsburgh Pirates top prospects have not gotten off to great starts since reaching a new level of the minor leagues, though just because they didn't hit the ground running, that doesn't mean you need to worry about them.

Jared Jones is possibly the epitome of this. Since reaching Triple-A, Jones has a 5.91 ERA and 1.48 WHIP. That's not good, and a massive downturn from Double-A, where he had a 2.23 ERA and 1.08 WHIP. But some things that are out of his control are greatly affecting him, specifically batted ball luck.

Although Jones is allowing more line drives with a 24.6% rate, his batting average on balls in play is .373. Line drives might have the best chance of falling for a hit, though even .373 is high. There are only two Major League pitchers with a BAbip higher than Jones has right now, with a line drive rate between 24-25%. You need a larger sample size to get a good reading with BAbip, but .373 still shows something isn't going Jones' way.

Triple-A's defense has gotten worse throughout the year. In Jared Jones' last start, Jared Triolo was the only defender with a good reputation in the field. The second closest might be Chris Owings, who even then has -11 career defensive runs saved at shortstop, the position he was playing in Jones' last start. Bad defense isn't always seen through errors. You can't make an error if you don't react to a batted ball in enough time or have enough range to get to one.

Jones is still striking out batters at a high 29.1% rate and has a respectable 10.3% walk rate as well as a 0.84 HR/9. Plus, some of his starts have inflated his ERA a tad. He allowed six earned runs in a combined eight innings in two outings. If these two outings are taken out of the equation, his ERA drops over a whole run to 4.57. That's still not great on paper, but it's a massive 1.34 earned run difference and above the league average.

Some might see that his xFIP was never good, but xFIP is probably one of the worst ERA estimators out there. It automatically assumes that every flyball pitcher who doesn't allow many home runs is unlucky. It does not account for how good or bad the pitcher is at limiting hard contact. Take David Bednar, for example. He has allowed just one run all year, has a 46.6% fly ball rate, but a 3.92 xFIP. What xFIP doesn't account for is that he's in the 89th percentile of opponent exit velocity or the 94th percentile of barrel rate.

Granted, we don't know how good or bad Jones is at limiting hard contact. Altoona doesn't have publicly available Statcast data, and Triple-A doesn't have a comprehensive database like MLB does, even if game-to-game publicly available Statcast data is available. But using this as a reason why Jones has been struggling and isn't good is not a good excuse.

One last thing to take into consideration is that even though his ERA is approaching 6.00, he's still not been terrible in the context of the rest of the league. Triple-A Indianapolis plays in the International League. The average batter in this league is hitting .263/.358/.444. The league average ERA is 5.23. Both the league average OPS and ERA are higher than they were at the peak of the steroid era in the early 2000s. So maybe give Jones a little slack to the fact he's been playing in an environment that is heavily playing in his opponents' favor.

Infielder Termarr Johnson

The second prospect I want to bring attention to is Termarr Johnson. Johnson was the Pirates' first-round pick in 2022 and was generally considered the best hitter in the draft. MLB Pipeline was so bullish on him that they drew comparisons to Wade Boggs and Vlad Guerrero Sr. for his ability to lay pitches and his bat control. So, with Johnson only batting .213 with a 25.7% strikeout rate at Greensboro, I'm sure there are some jumping to conclusions.

The first thing is that Johnson has a .235 batting average on balls in play, in less than 100 plate appearances. As stated earlier, batting average on balls in play needs a larger sample size to give you an accurate reading. But even then, .235 is just wholly unlucky. There have only been 56 instances since 2010 where a player had a lower BABIP and at least 400 plate appearances. That's out of nearly 2600 instances (2589 to be exact).

Secondly, you're talking about a league that's much less hitter-friendly than Triple-A, where Jones is. The league average hitter is slashing .243/.333/.390 with a strikeout rate of 25.9%. I have faith that whatever the coaches at Greensboro are telling players is working. Greensboro currently leads the South Atlantic League in runs scored, and ranks top three in OPS (2nd), slugging (2nd), home runs hit (2nd), RBIs (1st), total bases (2nd), and walks (3rd), and fifth in total hits.

So what about Johnson's strikeouts? As I stated earlier, there are a ton of K's in the South Atlantic League. He's actually got an above-average strikeout rate. But this is something Johnson did at Bradenton. From his season debut through June, he had a 32.1% strikeout rate. During July, he cut that down to just 16.1%. Johnson might already be figuring it out. He has a 22.7% strikeout rate through his last ten games. Again, take into account the small sample size. Those ten games make up 62.5% of his total games played and 62.9% of his plate appearances thus far for Greensboro.

Keep in mind that Johnson is still very young. He just turned 19 in mid-June. The league average age for position players is 22.2 years of age. Pitchers are slightly older at 23.2 years old. I know, when you see Jackson Holliday already at Double-A and the Orioles talking like they're not ruling out a potential late-season Major League promotion, it's hard not to compare Johnson and ask why he isn't doing that and why he can't Pirates get him to do that. But you can't compare the two. Holliday is the outlier to outliers. Johnson is doing what most minor league top prospects do.

The last thing you have to remember is that both might still be working on things. Maybe Jones is trying out a new location with his pitches. Maybe Johnson is trying something new with his mechanics and swing. These guys, after all, are still developing. They're not finished products yet. Plus, it's not as if neither has shown off bad stuff in the minor leagues. Johnson has already gone yard four times in 16 games, while Jones' pitches have looked better than ever.

Fans should still be excited for both Jones and Johnson. Sure, they might not be lighting their respective level on fire, but they're still extremely young prospects with a lot of upside. They're still very talented and have shown that talent, even if their stats don't back it up right now. Give it time, as in both cases, it's a relatively small sample size, and both are affected by factors outside their control.

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