Pirates Prospects 2022 Award Winners

Each week during the season, the writers at Pirates Prospects submit their votes for the Player of the Week from the previous week. At the end of each full month, we add in a Player of the Month article. At the end of this year, we voted on a Player of the Year and a Pitcher of the Year. Below you will find links to all of the 2022 weekly/monthly/yearly winners.

This winners this year were dominated by hitters. There were just two pitchers who won Player of the Week throughout the season. There are two reasons that stand out for why that happened. The biggest reason is that it just wasn’t a good year for pitching.

Our Pitcher of the Year was a guy who missed two full months, and he was an easy choice. The other big reason has to do more with Player of the Week awards. The Pirates really limited starters, with very few instances early in the season where a pitcher made two starts in the same week. So when you’re working with a group of guys who mostly pitched six or fewer innings for the week, compared to guys playing six games, it’s tough for the pitchers to stack up.

With all of those hitters winning, the best part is that the weekly awards were really spread out among a big group. Out of the 21 winners, there were 18 different players. Ji-hwan Bae, Endy Rodriguez, and Jase Bowen were the only repeat winners, and coincidentally, all three won back-to-back-to-back weeks in June.

The Player of the Month awards were not as spread out among players. Mason Martin won with a great April, then Matt Gorski was the winner in May and June, while Endy Rodriguez took July and August. Martin fell off for the rest of the season, and Gorski was injured for most of the second half of the year, so Rodriguez didn’t have any real competition for the Player of the Year award. Gorski’s emergence was enough to be named our Breakout prospect of the year.