Two weeks ago we had a prospect status update article for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which covered anyone with MLB experience this year who still qualified as a prospect. All that means is that they haven’t surpassed 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched or 30 appearances for relievers in the majors. We did that article as a replacement for the top 30 prospects updates that we used to give in the nightly Prospect Watch articles way back in 2019 when minor league baseball was a thing. Below you will find the updates for all of the eligible players over the last week. Here’s the September 21st update. Check the link up top for the original article, which has season updates for all of the players eligible at the time.
The list this week is 13 players long with the addition of Jared Oliva. Nik Turley, Sam Howard, Geoff Hartlieb and Mitch Keller all had prospect status at the beginning of the 2020 season, but they have all exceeded the maximum limits earlier this year. The players are broken up into hitters and pitchers, listed alphabetically.
Hitters
Anthony Alford – DNP (Injured)
Will Craig – DNP
Phillip Evans – DNP (Injured)
Ke’Bryan Hayes – He’s the #1 prospect in the system right now and he has only solidified that spot with his all-around play. Hayes will hold that top spot until he loses his prospect status next year, probably somewhere around the 12th game of the season (he’s 46 at-bats short). He finished the season strong, collecting hits in eight straight at-bats, while reaching ten times in a row, with his hit streak book-ended by walks. His final slash line for 24 games reads .376/.442/.682, with 14 extra-base hits and nine walks. He committed one error in 68 chances.
Jason Martin – DNP (Injured) Martin suffered a back injury last weekend and that ended his season early.
Jared Oliva – Oliva was called up for his Major League debut with exactly one week left in the season. He didn’t start the first day, but he started four straight games, before being on the bench for the last two days. In his limited time, he went 3-for-16 with no walks and three singles.
Pitchers
JT Brubaker – Brubaker started twice in the final week, throwing 6.2 strong innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Monday, followed by five runs over five innings on Sunday, Three of those runs came on his final pitch, so it wasn’t a bad outing up to that point. Brubaker just stayed under the prospect status line, throwing 47.1 innings this season. Assuming he starts in the majors next year, he will lose that prospect tag (you would hope) in his first game. He will still be eligible for the Rookie of the Year award though. They stayed by the old rules and he didn’t spend 45 days in the majors before September, even though he will get credit for a full service year. It was a nice season for someone who was injured almost all of last year and had no prior big league time. He finished with a 4.96 ERA , a 1.37 WHIP and more strikeouts (48) than innings pitched.
Nick Burdi – DNP (Injured)
Blake Cederlind – Cederlind debuted with two 1-2-3 appearances, then got roughed up in his third outing, failing to retire a batter. He bounced back with a scoreless outing on Thursday to finish out the blowout win over the Chicago Cubs, the pitched a scoreless final inning of the season. So he looked good in four games and really bad in one, which isn’t bad for a late season trial.
Miguel Del Pozo – DNP
Nick Mears – DNP
Cody Ponce – DNP
Brandon Waddell – DNP
