ALTOONA, Pa. – Sitting atop the Pirates minor league organizational leader board in home runs are three names: Jordan Luplow (14), Logan Hill (14), and Max Moroff (13). No one else has more than seven home runs in the organization.
Hill is doing it in the Florida State League, which is quite impressive for a player in essentially his first season at High-A ball. You know about Moroff’s story, which right now has him in the major leagues after converting his gap-to-gap approach to home run power.
As for Luplow, he hit is 14th home run on June 6th, which is the fastest a player has reached that mark in Altoona Curve franchise history (h/t Cory Giger, Altoona Mirror). Luplow has quickly surpassed his season-high for home runs as a professional, as he hit 12 homers for West Virginia in 2015 and 10 while in Bradenton last season.
The humble Luplow says that his ultimate goal is to “go out there and try to win games”, and he just tries to continue to get on base and pass the baton to the guys behind him. Otherwise, he is just keeping his swing simple.
“Working with [Hitting Coach Kevin] Riggs has paid off so far,” Luplow said. “We’ve been able to consistently take a good approach to the pitcher each night. It is just staying simple and having a good approach rather than thinking about my swing too much. Everyone at this level has a really good swing. The thing that separates is a good hitting coach and strong approach.”
Luplow has done a great job at swinging within the strike zone and hitting fastballs this season. Both Michael Ryan, the Altoona Curve manager, and Riggs have been impressed by his ability to lay off bad breaking pitches. He has forced opposing pitchers to throw their breaking balls within the strike zone, and Luplow has taken advantage.
“He’s making pitchers think twice about throwing certain pitches,” Riggs said. “He’s more in control of what he wants to do. It’s playing the game within the game. As a hitter, he’s understanding that he can set up a pitcher just like how they try to set him up. He is grasping that concept extremely well.”
His ability to lay off breaking balls that are ending up outside the zone has gotten him in numerous fastball counts. That has allowed him to essentially tee off of a pitch he likes, and he isn’t missing them this season. Those 14 home runs are accompanied by 13 doubles, giving him a .941 OPS so far this year. He also hasn’t really shown much of a gap in his lefty/righty splits, as Altoona has faced mostly right-handed pitching this year, and Luplow has been just fine.
One thing that I have noticed so far is that Luplow has been an extreme pull hitter this season. Of his 27 combined home runs and doubles, 24 of them have been left of center field. I noticed this early in the season when I first saw Luplow hit, and the trend has continued as the year progresses.
His coaches don’t feel that consistently pulling the ball is a huge concern at this level.
“Power is power,” Ryan said. “I don’t think it matters where it goes. Power comes as a player progresses through his career, and if he has some pull power, then he can move it to the other direction. It’s just a matter of getting some good pitches and doing damage to it. He’ll learn the rest.”
Riggs put another spin on it, saying that these players need to “be chasing 40 doubles” each season while in the minors.
“That translates to power later on when they get a little more physically strong and start understanding the pitches that they can hit out,” Riggs said about hitting more doubles. “They start grasping their hot zone and what that looks like. That’s them going through the levels and going through the process.”
Only eleven players in all of minor league baseball hit 40 or more doubles in 2016, so the feat is quite difficult to say the least. The Curve leader in doubles in 2016 was Barrett Barnes with 28. Max Moroff led the team the previous year with 28, as well.
Either way, his coaches have been pleased with Luplow’s quick progress this season.
“I think he’s truly committed to an approach and a plan right now, that honestly, all of these guys need to get on board with,” Riggs said. “He’s covering pitches all over the plate. What Jordan has done is taking to it quicker than a lot of these guys right now. I’m really excited for, not only where he’s at, but where he’s going.”
The numbers defend what Riggs says about Luplow’s approach, as his strikeout rate is down to around 15% compared to 18.4% last year in Bradenton. His walks are slightly down, but not extreme like a lot of first year Double-A players.
“I’m just trying to limit the chases,” Luplow said. “As you go up levels here, that’s what hitters have to do best — limit chasing the bad pitches. That’s why hitters are so good.”
So far this year, the Curve have seen numerous guys go on stretches of extremely strong play. Kevin Kramer began the season with a 31-game on base streak. Edwin Espinal was crushing the ball earlier in the season. Connor Joe went on quite a tear in May. Lately, Wyatt Mathisen has climbed the charts to have the best batting average (.313) in all of the Pirates minor league system.
For Luplow, yes, his play in the month of May was far superb; however, he’s been steady for the majority of the season. Balls started falling more often within the past month, but he was hitting bombs early in the season, too. Some of them were caught. Some of them went just barely foul. (Seriously, I can remember 5-6 home run distance balls that just barely went left of the foul pole for Luplow in April.) Long story short, Luplow has been quite the story so far in his Double-A debut.
“He’s just in one of those grooves where he is getting good pitches and not missing,” Michael Ryan said. “He’s being aggressive, and he’s doing some damage. He’s doing an unbelievable job and playing with a ton of confidence.”
We will see what happens the rest of the year, but early indications show that the Pirates might have themselves a legitimate corner outfield prospect playing in Altoona right now.
