Seth Hernandez's monster prospect ranking leap may confirm Pirates made best draft pick

There is a version of this conversation where we slow down, act responsible, and remind everyone that Seth Hernandez is still a 19-year-old pitcher in Low-A. But that’s also a lot less fun.

The Pirates took Hernandez with the No. 6 overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, watched five players come off the board before him, and now, less than a year later, he is already crashing the top tier of prospect rankings. 

Hernandez is up to No. 10 in Baseball America’s latest Top 100, a 28-spot leap from his preseason ranking. 

The surface-level numbers are already absurd. Through five starts with Low-A Bradenton, Hernandez has thrown 22 innings, allowed 10 hits, three earned runs, walked six, struck out 41, and posted a 1.23 ERA with a 0.73 WHIP. He’s 2-0, and the strikeout total is the part that makes you blink twice. 

Again, it’s Low-A. We all understand the assignment. But dominance still has to happen before we start asking whether it can translate. Hernandez is completely bullying his first full professional test.

The Pirates didn’t make a safe, boring pick at No. 6. They took a high school right-hander, which is one of the more terrifying phrases in draft history if we are being honest. Prep arms come with risk. Bodies change and development is rarely linear. The reason teams hesitate on that profile isn’t because the ceiling is hard to see, but because the path to that ceiling can be covered in potholes.

Hernandez, though, was entering the draft as the best prep arm in his class after his time at Corona High School in California, and he brought the kind of stuff that makes evaluators willing to accept the risk. 

Seth Hernandez is giving the Pirates early proof that their draft-day gamble had real conviction

Baseball America recently wrote that Hernandez’s pro debut had entered rare territory, which is exactly the kind of phrase that should make Pirates fans sit up a little straighter. The rankings jump only reinforces what the numbers are already saying. This is a prospect forcing the industry to update the way it talks about him in real time.

The Pirates’ farm system already has star-level juice with Konnor Griffin sitting at the top of it, and now he’s beginning to make noise at the major league level. They already have pitching credibility in the organization because Paul Skenes exists as the ultimate proof of concept. But Hernandez gives Pittsburgh another potential high-end arm developing behind the current major league group, one who could become the next great internal answer instead of another prospect fans are simply asked to wait on.

And we know that “wait” is a dangerous word in Pittsburgh. Hernandez doesn’t erase all of that frustration. But he can make the future feel sharper, believable, and less like a sales pitch.

There will be harder tests. Each step up the farm system will tell us a little more about how much of this early dominance travels. The Pirates would be foolish to rush a teenage arm just because the internet is ready to dream loudly. But sometimes, when the stuff looks this loud this early, the dream is allowed to get loud, too.

Hernandez is changing the way we look at the Pirates’ 2025 draft. What felt like a bold bet on upside is already starting to look like one of the smartest picks on the board.

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