I don’t know when it was last year, but the popularity of our Roundtable feature led to an idea for a new daily Prospect Watch. All of us are constantly following the Pirates and their farm system. Why not have a daily article with Roundtable style updates on players who stood out to us?
Today’s the first day that we had multiple people pick one player. Shalin Polanco (pictured above by Wilbur Miller) has been drawing a lot of attention this week, with reports sent in on separate days from two different writers. That makes sense, as he’s had a big month in Bradenton, hitting .321/.323/.679 with three homers. We’ve also got a look at recently promoted catcher Abrahan Gutierrez, who is tearing up Altoona, and an update on Will Matthiessen showing some promise in Greensboro.
Looking for the classic version of the Prospect Watch, with all of the nightly game action? You can now find that on Pirates Prospects Live.
Yesterday’s Results: Osvaldo Bido Does Well in Debut But Bullpen Collapse Means Another Loss
Today’s Action: The Battle of the Best in the NL Central?
WILBUR MILLER: Shalin Polanco, OF, Bradenton (A)
Shalin Polanco signed for a $2.3M bonus, a huge one by Pirate standards, partly on the basis of power potential and the possibility of staying in center field. He can be frustrating to watch, because the athleticism and bat speed are obvious, but he can fall into the habit of swinging wildly. He’s followed a consistent pattern, though, of toning it down after getting off to a rough start each year he’s played. That’s happened in the Dominican Summer League, the Florida Complex League and now the Florida State League.
The progress has been especially pronounced this year. His monthly OPS, April through mid-June, has been .597, .754 and .967. He’s now third in the league in home runs with nine, and 11th in slugging. And he won’t turn 20 until next February. Polanco’s strikeouts have dropped sharply each month, from half his at-bats in April to a third in May to a quarter in June. He seems to tinker with his approach; he drew ten walks in a dozen April games (he missed the first week), but just two in his first ten games in June. An aggressive approach so far appears to work better for him than trying to lay off a lot of pitches.
Defense is a positive for Polanco. He doesn’t have blazing speed, but he runs well enough and takes good routes in the outfield. The Pirates, as they generally do, have moved him all over the outfield, but he fits well in center. His arm is at least average. It may seem like slow progress with Polanco, but considering his age it’s really not. He’ll be a good age for Greensboro if he opens there next year.
ANTHONY MURPHY: Shalin Polanco, OF, Bradenton (A)
Shalin Polanco had one of the best plate appearances I’ve seen this year by a hitter. Falling behind 1-2 against a left-handed pitcher, slowly chipping away and staying alive long enough to work things full before doubling to drive in a run.
He stretched that at-bat to 12 pitches before getting the right one to drive for a double.
It was one of three hits that day for the outfielder in Bradenton’s big blow out victory last night. There still seems to be a little swing and miss in his game, but the strikeouts as a whole continue to drop.
After striking out 36.4% of the time in April (55 plate appearances), he’s improved in each month, including the largest current sample size of May (29.4%, 102 PA). In 46 plate appearances this month, Polanco has struck out 10 times (21.7%), a huge improvement over April.
MLB Pipeline picked him as the system’s breakout player this year, and the fact he’s quickly correcting his strikeout issues, along with being one of the best power hitters in the Florida State League at 19-years-old, it’s starting to be easy to see why they thought so highly of Polanco.
JEFF REED: Abrahan Gutierrez, C, Altoona (AA)
It wasn’t too long ago the Pirates had little to no catching depth. It was so grim; Eli Wilson was probably considered the top dog.
Few years later, one area of improvement we can point to with the new front office is the revitalized catcher depth. Obviously, there is Endy Rodriguez and Henry Davis, but don’t sleep on darkhorse candidate Abrahan Gutierrez.
Father Abrahan began the year repeating High-A in Greensboro. He started the year hot batting .303 in his first eight games, then an injury sidelined him for a week and he came back and hit .080 in seven games before going down with an injury again. Couple weeks later, he came back and hit .421 in five games before jumping on the promotion train with Henry Davis going to Indianapolis.
In 2022, Gutierrez didn’t have one of the flashy park popping offensive seasons, but he had a respectable 112 wRC+. In 2023, he showed overall consistency with a 114 wRC+ through 20 games. Now in Altoona, he’s boosted his production up to 177 wRC+ while hitting two home runs and four doubles already in seven games. That nearly matches his High-A output in a supreme hitter friendly environment already, where he hit two home runs and five doubles in 20 games.
The Henry Davis like production likely isn’t sustainable for Gutierrez, but the added offensive production coupled with his already strong defensive game – which Anthony Murphy touched on in his look at the system’s hitting prospects – could be a huge boost.
The Pirates could be in a position a year from now where they have three MLB ready and capable catchers on the 40-man roster. An injury or slump between Davis or Rodriguez could open an opportunity for Gutierrez. It would also be wonderful knowing the Pirates had a catcher just a level below, should anything happen, who could easily step in and replace production with no step lost.
JOHN DREKER: Will Matthiessen, 1B/OF, Greensboro (A+)
Getting demoted a level from one season to the next is usually a bad sign for a minor leaguer’s future. Will Matthiessen was at Double-A Altoona last year, though an injury limited him to 11 games. He tried to play winter ball in Puerto Rico, but that was cut short as well. At 25 years old, the 6’6″ first baseman is back at High-A Greensboro this year, where there could be an interesting development for his future.
While getting some reports from the player development side of the Pirates, one of the names that came up with Matthiessen. I was told that he is once again looking like the hitter that they used a sixth round pick on in the 2019 draft. He put up a 1.017 OPS with Stanford in somewhat limited playing time during the 2018 season. He was still pitching at that time. He moved full-time to the hitting side in 2019, then put up a .310/.389/.532 slash line over 252 plate appearances. He signed with the Pirates and went to Morgantown, where he had a .643 OPS in 45 games.
Matthiessen missed the 2020 season like a majority of prospects. He went to Greensboro when he returned in 2021, after a very brief stop with Low-A Bradenton. He put up a .785 OPS for the season in 89 games, finishing with 17 doubles and 15 homers. Neither his Altoona nor his winter time went well in last year’s shortened season. This year, he’s hitting .265/.372/.463 through 40 games. He has better numbers at home, as you would expect in Greensboro, but his .732 road OPS is 17 points higher than the league average OPS.
Considering that Matthiessen pitched in college, there was expected to be a bit of a project feel to his development. Add in the completely lost 2020 season and the mostly lost 2022 season, and it takes away some of the negative aspect of a 25-year-old in High-A. He might be starting to show the promise they saw in the 2019 draft.
Prospect Watch Archives
6/14: Nick Cimillo, Geovanny Planchart, Jesus Castillo
6/13: Brandan Bidios, Yordany De Los Santos, J.P. Massey
6/12: David Matoma, Jun-Seok Shim, Tsung-Che Cheng
The Prospect Watch runs every day at noon, featuring three players from the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system.
