Analyzing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Top Prospects in Spring Training (Part 2: Hitters)
Jack Brannigan
Brannigan is a 23 year old Right-Handed Third Baseman and is the Pirates’ #10 prospect. His high promise from High-A invited him to big league camp.
Brannigan’s strengths lie in hitting the ball in the air and drawing walks. Those are great skills to have in today’s MLB, but there is much to be desired with his development. Even though his expected stats were better than his actual stats, they were middle of the pack. This is definitely not bad for a High-A player, but let’s take a look on what he can continue to improve.
Hard Hit % can greatly be improved with barreling a pitch. Brannigan’s swing angle is very high and yields a lot of fly balls. Intuitively, a ball is best struck when the swing angle is opposite the pitch’s break angle, or “approach angle”. That swing sends the ball back the way it came, and in its purest form puts knuckle spin on the ball. Backspin is still good though, and it’s better to have swings between the two black lines than outside. On all pitch types, he swings up, which compromises bat speed and swing decisions by having to swing the bat earlier. Every ball in between the lines had at minimum a .352 xWOBA.
He struggled with swing decisions on the sinker from RHP.
On first pitches, he took 16 of 17 pitches which can be beneficial in spring to pick up on a pitcher’s release points and angle, but it is not a habit analytics support for long term success at the plate.
His chase rates on 2 strikes against RHP were not healthy on the inner half, spanning multiple pitch types.
Jase Bowen
Jase Bowen is a 23 year old Right-Handed IF/OF who has played as high as AA last season.
His strengths lie in hitting good value fly balls without a ton of whiffs.
I’d offer the same advice as Brannigan and bringing his swing angles down, by keeping bat speed but swinging just a milisecond later to generate more line drives and barrels.
His swing decisions on the first pitch are impressive. He has laid off a few corner strikes but that’s not where a hitter’s best damage is done. Waiting for a mistake pitch, especially in spring training, is smart.
His swing decisions are also impressive on two strikes. He did chase the offspeed here, but was perfect on every other pitch type.
Termarr Johnson
Johnson is a Left-Handed middle infielder. He is the Pirates’ #2 proespect who is only 19 years young, which makes this pretty impressive.
Johnson hits a healthy mix of line drives and fly balls, avoiding the groundball, and getting his swing angle in good adjustment with the approach angle. He minimizes pitches where his swing angle was above 30°
His swing decision on the first pitch against lefties was perfect, but against righties he missed some good pitches to hit and chased 2 of 5 balls.
Johnson is very swing heavy on two strikes, which pitchers will exploit and has generated 3 chases in 4 balls.
Tsung-Che Cheng
Cheng is a 22 year old Left-Handed infielder. He’s played as high as AA and is the Pirates’ #9 prospect.
Cheng succeeds by avoiding chases and groundballs.
Cheng hits a good mix of flyballs and line drives and uses all sides of the field, besides his groundballs. He does an excellent job squaring up his bat with the ball, which is necessary considering his lack of raw power.
What stood out to me was his inability to hit the curveball. The damage is from RHP and this isn’t exactly the prime spot to put a curveball. This can be helped by lowering the swing angle up top.
Cheng wisely avoids chasing on the first pitch of an at bat, but he should be less conservative with pitches like the two blue ones not on the corners. He has a natural nack for knowing the zone, so practicing some aggressiveness should help his game in the long run without turning him into a free swinger.
His swing tendencies on 2 strikes are impressive as well. His only 2 chases were on cutters, and increasing the aggressiveness of his approach should help minimize those blue dots in the strike zone.
