Any cursory glance at a Pirates prospect list will show that the system right now is very shallow in terms of positional player talent. After Termarr Johnson, the next 2 positional players in the top 20 on MLB Pipeline are Mitch Jebb at 7 and Lonnie White Jr. at 15. In terms of offensive reinforcements to the Pirates in the upcoming years, there is a lot of expectation on the former 4th overall pick to be a star. Termarr’s stint in professional baseball has not gone like any fan expected after the 2nd baseman from Georgia was drafted. Sold as a short, stocky 2nd baseman with one of the best pure hit tools seen in a high school prospect, Johnson instead has shown immense levels of power at the expense of quality contact. After about 130 games in the Pittsburgh organization, what has he shown us so far?
The Good
If there is one thing you have heard about Termarr Johnson it has been the power he has displayed since entering pro baseball.
Johnson ranks in the 90th percentile in exit velocity in the entirety of the minors, which is absurd as a teenager. This is what rightfully excites Pirates fans about him because as he grows physically and developmentally, the power will only grow with him. The exit velocity averages will tick upwards and you’re going to have a bare minimum 60-65 power grade when he hits the majors. Most teenagers at this point in their career simply do not possess the power that Termarr has put on display. In 105 professional games between A and A+ ball Termarr hit 18 home runs and slugged .431. It’s a sight to behold when he makes quality contact with the baseball. He hits the ball hard nearly 40% of the time and often finds the sweet spot of the barrel when contact is made. It’s hard not to sit back and imagine how many home runs a middle infield of Oneil Cruz and Johnson can hit for with that much raw power.
This power comes from impressive bat speed, Termarr’s hands are so quick and explosive through the zone that he can hit the ball much farther than his other 18-19-year-old counterparts. This speed helps him generate power from his short and stock 5’7 frame which puts him naturally ahead of the competition. The bat speed means he can handle high-velocity fastballs at nearly every level as he progresses through the minors. Watch these 2 home runs he hit on the same day back in July, both on fastballs attacking the zone (and ignore the 2 sacrifice bunts).
This is by far Johnson’s best hitting attribute in my eyes, and if anything is going to keep him in the majors for a consistent run of successful play it will be this ferocious swing combined with the ability to select the pitches he likes and to be aggressive with them. I tried to find a player whose swing Termarr’s reminds me of and in terms of similar pull rates and bat speed, this is who I landed on.
Termarr has also shown a keen eye, which comes to the shock of no one if they’ve been following his career. Since being drafted Johnson has consistently walked at a rate north of 20%. While this patience does limit his offensive potential since he barely swings at over half of the pitches he sees in the zone, he also rarely is seen swinging at pitches that aren’t in the zone. The walk rates continued to soar upwards with his time in the minors as well, reaching up to a 30% walk rate as the 2023 season was winding to a close. Termarr can be a polarizing prospect because of the high power and walk rates contrasting with the high whiff rates that we’ll get to later. The most common comparison he gets is to Jack Suwinski, and if you’ve been in Pirates circles you know just how polarizing Suwinski can be.
The power and the walks are the types of good that everyone knows about Termarr already. I’m positive 99% of people reading this have already seen him take some poor Dunedin Blue Jays pitcher 500 feet. To throw something new into the mix, I have noticed an improvement that I haven’t seen touched on even from most prospect-heavy accounts or websites. When Termarr was drafted there was a pretty sizable hitch in his swing, which is completely normal for high school prospects to have when entering pro baseball. The hitch is not completely gone yet, but there has been a steady improvement in creating a much more fluid swing in 2023. This should help with some of the whiff rates unless he keeps selling out for power or just doesn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to keep them down. Here is a clip from early footage we had of Termarr batting with the hitch, and then following it will be an at-bat from 2023 that is showing the improvement.
Considering that the whiffs are the biggest hole in his game, this should help going into next year. Before we hop into the bad and the ugly, it should be noted that the strikeout rates were dipping towards the end of the year, but there is still a major cause of concern and I’ll explain why.
The Bad
Termarr’s biggest issue is that he is whiffing on pitches at an alarming rate and the strikeout rate is worrisome for any prospect if it approaches the 30% mark. Part of the reason why we’re seeing so many strikeouts is that Termarr watches 43% of pitches in the strike zone go by. As Pirates fans who have watched the team over the last 2 seasons under Andy Haines’ tutelage, watching so many strikes go by will result in more strikeouts and that is part of the trade-off. With Johnson’s bat speed and power, you would like to see him a bit more aggressive in the zone. Termarr, while enjoying the ability to pull the ball over 40% of the time for elite power, also can hit the ball the other way to spoil unfavorable pitches and steal hits in unfavorable 2-strike counts. However, the way Termarr approaches hitting so far means he can’t really accomplish this.
When you read scouting reports about Termarr Johnson, the consensus seems to be that he has sold out a lot of contact in order to generate as much power as possible. During his midseason report of several Pirates prospects, Anthony Murphy (linked is his Twitter, if you like the Pirates and prospects you should give him a follow) said this about Johnson:
I think it’s going to be interesting to see how he does during the second half, especially with the strikeouts. Johnson swings out of his shoes a lot. That’s how he gets to his power, but he’s also sacrificing his average in the process. He’s playing in a league where the ball doesn’t travel well in the summer months, which can also really take a lot out of a player. I’d call it a success if he can get the average up, while cutting into those strikeouts, even if the OPS stays the same
https://www.piratesprospects.com/2023/07/prospect-watch-termarr-johnson-jose-hernandez-yoerys-hernandez.html
You can take a couple of things away from this approach. One is that you absolutely love to see this kind of power from a 2nd baseman and that the whiffs are worth the reward of always swinging for the fences. You can also surmise that if Termarr wanted to incorporate contact into his game he could do so. You could also take a more cynical approach; where the Pirates believe that sacrificing this much contact to hit a few more home runs is going to end up turning sour in the long term, especially as Johnson starts to face better pitching as he advances through the minors. I have already written thousands of words on how I feel about the Pirates hitting development, so I won’t go into that now. Ultimately, we do not know if this is an organizational choice or if this is how Termarr has chosen to approach hitting. My main concern is that it isn’t utilizing Johnson’s reported 70-grade hit tool as well as we could and that selling out for power is going to result in more Nick Gonzales-like projections as he reaches AA and AAA.
One small note to add is just that Termarr’s defense has also been of slight concern. Getting concrete accurate data from MiLB about defense is hard, but most reports will say he’s displayed sloppy to average defense with his glove. If you are getting the ideal Termarr in the majors with a 120-130 wRC+ and 30 home runs, not a single soul will actually care nor should they. But as he grows you would like to see him become at least league-average with the glove at 2nd base. I don’t think right now it’s a big deal but it’s worthy to note.
The Ugly
Several parts of this chart outline my worries for Termarr going forward as a prospect. You can live with a prospect having higher strikeout rates looking for their pitch. You can deal with subpar defense when the bat speed and power are this good. If those were the only issues I had with Termarr I would put him in the top 30 of any top 100 prospect list around. My biggest issue with Johnson right now is that he really struggles to hit breaking balls and off-speed pitches in any meaningful capacity. In the minors, you can coast relatively easily by sitting on fastballs and still have good numbers. When you reach the majors, MLB-level pitching will simply eat you alive if you cannot touch their breaking stuff. We have already seen this happen with previous Pirates rookies, which is another cause for concern on whether or not Johnson can translate into a good MLB player.
Termarr Johnson saw 560 breaking and off-speed pitches during his stints in Bradenton and Greensboro in 2023. Of these 560 he only managed to put 47 of these balls in play, not even for hits. That is 8% of all the breaking balls that he saw. He whiffed on over half of the breaking balls seen (50.7%) and nearly 40% of the off-speed thrown at him (37.5%). You can surely chalk up some of these to the fact that his swing and chase rates are so low, but the whiffs are mostly concerning. Pitchers start throwing devastating breaking balls regularly when they hit AA and AAA, Termarr struggling to make contact with these pitches before hitting the true gauntlet is not what you want to see from a top-30 prospect. One of the biggest giveaways that a prospect’s bat might not translate to the majors is running very high K rates at all levels of the minors. You can be freaks of nature like Oneil Cruz who can overcome this with power levels and speed that top the charts league-wide, but for most guys, they are fighting against an upward current. If there is anything Termarr must showcase this offseason, it is that he needs to be aggressive and learn how to hit breaking pitches. A 33% whiff rate across the board simply will not cut it if the Pirates are going to use Termarr in their competitive window.
Conclusion
Termarr Johnson has the best pure tools in the system, and it isn’t particularly close. His selling out for power with every swing has displayed at least 65-grade power while still being a teenager. In terms of raw talent, there aren’t that many guys in minor league baseball who can compare with what the Georgia native has to offer. However, with the swing-and-miss issues that plagued 2023 and a lot of Pirates rookies when they made their major league debuts, there are serious reasons to have concerns about just how good Termarr will be able to be. Termarr might be a victim of an organizational philosophy that does not quite suit him. 2023 will be a very important year as he will probably be arriving in Altoona at some point, and if these swing issues are fixed he should be an absolute monster and fly up prospect rating sites again after next year.
North Shore Nine 
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