There are clues that will give away just how high a front office is on a prospect, one of which is how aggressive they are with that player. A tougher assignment means they expect more of said prospect.
Going just off that, it’s easy to see how excited the Pirates are about Dariel Lopez. He played in Bradenton as a teenager in 2021, and just wrapped this past season in High-A at 20 years old.
Lopez flashed some intriguing power potential in Bradenton, especially toward the opposite field. He translated that to 19 home runs in 102 games for the Greensboro Grasshoppers. A late season injury likely prevented him hitting the 20 home run plateau, but regardless he still finished among the system leaders in the category.
RBI Trip Trip Triple for Dariel Lopez! pic.twitter.com/4WovokTIop
— Jim Rosati
Of course, Lopez definitely benefited from the confines of First National Bank Field, hitting 15-of-his-19 home runs there, also seeing an over 200-point difference in his OPS on the road.
That being said, the difference between Lopez and some of the other prospects that have benefitted from playing at Greensboro is his age. Lopez will play the entire 2023 season at 21-years-old, potentially in Double-A. He also benefits in that his power is one of his better tools, so the home runs are more expected from him.
Regardless of the home park, Lopez put together a fantastic season in High-A — finishing in the top 10 in hits, slugging percentage, home runs and total bases among qualified South Atlantic League hitters. Among the top 20 leaders in wRC+, which is park adjusted, Lopez was the fourth youngest and finished 16th overall (116) in the SALLY.
What can really set Lopez off as a prospect will be shoring up the errors on the defensive end. He bounced around the infield last year, and did show some improvement on the diamond. In 2021 he committed 33 errors on 236 opportunities (86%), improving both marks this past year (25 errors, 91.6 FLD%).
Despite the high error numbers, you won’t find many in the system that aren’t confident in his ability to play third — he was even voted the best defensive third baseman in 2021 by the ‘Single-A Southeast’ managers.
This will be an interesting offseason for Lopez, as he appeared in five games in the Dominican League, posting a .826 OPS. He is also Rule 5 eligible.
The Rule 5 draft is always tricky to predict, and him being just 20-years old with some defensive questions may prevent him from being selected. The Pirates may just play it safe and protect him. They’ve been aggressive with him, so it would make sense they also see him on enough of an accelerated timeline to add him to the 40-man roster now.
I mentioned going into last season Lopez having ‘breakout’ potential, which probably was a year early based on his age and where he was going to be playing. He’s made some small improvements to his game that should really help him should he start in Altoona.
If he does start in Double-A at 21, he will join two recent top prospects in doing so — Liover Peguero and Quinn Priester — two of the best in the Pirates system. So that alone would tell you how they feel about Lopez.
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