North Shore Nine

If you ask most Pirates fans who the most frustrating player to watch is, probably 95% of them would answer Jack Suwinski. This a completely fair opinion, as his highs are so high but his lows make him look like your Giant Eagle cashier taking swings in the batter’s box. However, my answer is someone else because, unlike Suwinski, this player has not established himself as a major league player even though he’s talented enough to be a top-half player in his position. If you couldn’t guess who that is by the title, that player is Liover Peguero. By pure raw talent, there aren’t many players on the Pirates, or in the Pirates system, that have the tools that Liover Peguero has.

Peguero has developed surprising pop for a middle infielder, showing power in AA/AAA to have the ability to hit 20 home runs in a season. He hit 13 home runs between the 2 levels in 76 games before getting the call to the major leagues in 2023. This translated fairly well to the majors because Peguero hit the ball hard in his short stint up with Pittsburgh. His average exit velocity of 89.3 mph is playable and he had a hard hit rate of 40%. He has the raw hitting tools to be an above-average 2nd baseman in the sport. Combined with blazing speed that tracks in the 95th percentile in all of baseball (and only Cruz and Bae are faster on the Pirates) when you squint you see an easy 20-homers/20 steals player who can provide league average defense at worst. It makes it infuriating to see him hit an unremarkable .653 OPS and a 77 OPS+.

After watching Peguero’s tape, reading through scouting reports, and looking at his statcast data, I’ve concluded that Peggy will never reach his full potential until something is done about his swing. The good news is that tweaking a swing to be more optimal is a problem you can realistically fix. The bad news is that this swing problem has been persisting for years now. Look at this quote from the website Prospects Live and their report on Peguero from 2021.

Bat path is a bit flat and has some chop to it; leads to him getting under the ball for pop-ups and high flies or rolling over. Aggressive in the zone; solid feel for the zone. Tendency to chase tough pitches and make weak contact instead of waiting for something to drive.

https://www.prospectslive.com/scoutingreports/liover-peguero

Peguero has kept the same approach to the plate throughout his career, which makes sense because it has made him successful through most of the minors. His raw tools and aggressive approach at the plate let him dominate his less talented opponents in pro baseball. The problem hit when he reached the majors and the competition is too good to have these flaws in his game. When Peguero did make contact with the baseball, his lack of barrel and swing control cost him. As the report said, he often tops the ball so instead of hitting a hard line drive it was often a hard ground ball to an infielder. He ran a 52% ground ball rate during his stint in the majors, which cuts into the raw power he has on display. His aggressiveness also needs to be utilized better, because swinging at pitches and spoiling them off is a valid strategy many hitters use. Unfortunately for Peggy, his aggressiveness is preventing him from making quality contact consistently. He barreled the ball a meager 5.2% of the time and hit the sweet spot of the ball only 27% of the time in 2023, both of which would rank around the bottom 3rd of qualified hitters in the sport. This is why we see the decrease of 13 home runs and an OPS in the 800s from minor league ball to sub 700 OPS and 7 home runs in the majors.

The problem highlighted here isn’t a problem we see in Alika Williams or Tucupita Marcano, who just don’t have the tools to be successful MLB hitters. This is a problem where Peguero’s swing needs to be tweaked to focus on bat control to get better quality contact. We all sat through 2 years of Ke’Bryan Hayes having this exact problem of hitting the ball hard but hitting it into the dirt. This is ultimately up to the hitting staff to fix and work with Peggy to tweak the swing in Spring Training. Ultimately this is why I still have some hope for Peguero, because this is fixable. However, this is not the end of Liover’s problems, because there is an even bigger problem of not making contact at all.

Not only did Liover Peguero fail to make quality contact last year, but he also didn’t make a lot of contact in general. This seems to be a symptom of his aggressive approach, where chasing bad pitches can get you eaten alive unless you’re a very special kind of hitter. This has been a concern since he was in the minors, much like the quality of contact issue. Here is a quote from Baseball Prospectus in their write-up of Liover:

Could be a star shortstop with these tools, could also be an up-and-down 3B/COF with swing-and-miss issues. Could be worse if everything collapses.

Hope is not lost for him but so far the swing-and-miss issues have been a major hindrance to Peugero’s career. A general rule of thumb off MLB hitters is when you’re north of 30% strikeout rates, it’s going to be very hard to be a major league caliber player. There are exceptions to the rule, but I don’t think Peguero can survive striking out as much as he is. In his rookie campaign, he struck out 31% of the time and made it even worse by only walking 5% of the time. Both are fairly large differences from his numbers in Altoona and Indianapolis and are arguably the biggest reason his OPS+ couldn’t even crack 80. What is most concerning are his whiffs against breaking pitches. He handled whiffs against fastballs and sinkers well; but when it came to the other pitches, he was wildly swinging at them with not a lot of success.

Conclusion

There are a select few in the Pittsburgh system that I would take over Peguero in terms of pure skill and talent. However, talent is no use if your swing and approach have prevented you from utilizing said talent. Peguero has to face the difficult reality that the way he tries to hit simply will not work if he wants a long career in the majors. It’s hard to unlearn what made you successful and got you to the Majors in the first place. Players who make poor-quality contact and strike out a lot will not make it in the modern major leagues. The biggest worry for me is that these issues have been known for years and that the Pirates minor league staff could not pick up on the issue. It’s almost certainly responsible for Peguero’s underwhelming 2022 season and responsible for his below-replacement-level play in 2023. Spring Training will be a true test for Peggy, where we will see if he’s been working to rectify these holes in his swing. If he tries to use the exact same approach and swing again in 2024, I cannot imagine he will stay the starting 2nd baseman for long. There will be better options out there.