Top 5 unranked prospects in the Pittsburgh Pirates' farm system

The Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of prospects you probably have heard about. Bubba Chandler, Termarr Johnson, Thomas Harrington, and Konnor Griffin are four of their best, but plenty of other prospects like Braxton Ashcraft, Wyatt Sanford, Levi Sterling, and Hunter Barco are notable names that most Pirates fans have heard about.

They can all be found on top prospect lists from all around baseball media. But the Bucs have plenty more aside from them that are noteworthy and could potentially be part of the Pirates’ long-term plans. These prospects aren’t going to be found on any of MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs, or Baseball America’s top Pirates prospect lists, but fans should know about them.

Alessandro Ercolani

From Gift Ngoepe from South Africa to Dovydas Neverauskas from Lithuania and now David Matoma from Uganda, the Pirates have found players from all parts of the world. Alessandro Ercolani, who hails from San Marino, might be the Pirates’ best unranked pitching prospect.

Ercolani is coming off a season where he put up a 3.29 ERA, 3.50 FIP, and 1.08 WHIP in 76.2 innings for High-A Greensboro, working both out of the bullpen and as a starting pitcher. He struck out just under 30% of opponents with a 29.7% K%, and only handed out a walk to 8% of batters. He was also not very home run prone, posting an HR/9 rate of 0.94. 

These numbers are good, but they’re even more impressive once you consider nearly all of his struggles came from just a single game where he allowed nine earned runs in just 2.1 innings. Outside of that game, Ercolani had a 2.30 ERA, 31% strikeout rate, 7.5% walk rate, and 0.73 HR/9 rate. The most impressive part of his season is that he had these good numbers while only being in his age-20 season. He was the third-youngest pitcher at High-A with at least 70 innings pitched.

Ercolani was sitting mid-90s with his four-seam fastball in 2023. He has four other offerings: a cutter, slider, curveball, and change-up. Ercolani improved his control from last year, going from an 11.3% BB% to 8% this year. He certainly has some decent stuff, and FanGraphs named him as a breakout pick and someone who could become a top 100 prospect in the near future based on league-sourced information from scouts, front-office personnel, and general managers.