North Shore Nine

Welcome to the weekly Scouting Prospects; Undiscovered Treasure series. Each week we will take a look at a different one of the Pirates prospects who fall outside of the Top 30. The format of these articles will highlight and discuss how the player came to the Pirates, how he has been playing and what to expect from them moving forward.

Yoldin De La Paz:

De La Paz was signed as an Internation Free Agent in 2019, right before the Covid shut down. Therefore, he missed development time and game action for the Pirates. Currently he stands at 6’0″ and weighs 165 pounds, he has been used both as a starter and a reliever so far in his Pirate career. He throws a four pitch mix of a fastball, slider, curveball and change-up. When he started pitching for the Pirates the fastball was sitting in the upper 80’s, however last season he had increased to the low 90’s.
In 2024 he began the season in Bradenton again at 21 year old, turning 22 in early May. He pitched very well in Bradenton to begin the season. Going 5-0 as a reliever with a 1.19 ERA in 12 games he struck out 24 managing to only walk 5. He had a 3.43 FIP a 3.04 xFIP a 9.53 K/9 rate a .66 WHIP and a .148 BABIP. Simply put he was phenomenal, so good in fact he was promoted to High A Greensboro. He has not had the same performance there as he had in Bradenton. In 7 games, including one start, he is 0-1 with a 7.31 ERA, he has a WHIP of 1.44 a BABIP of .333 a FIP of 4.50 and a xFip of 4.29. Most of these bad stats come from a pair of relief appearances against Jersey Shore. In those two games he pitched 4 innings gave up 13 hits and 10 earned runs. If you remove those two games it would lower his ERA to 3.00 for Greensboro. While you cannot revise history like that, it does point to success at the high A level even past a currently bloated ERA. Whil he has not struck out batters at the same percentage as he did in Bradenton, he is also walking them at a lower clip. If he is able to continue to do that and to get his strikeout percentage back up he could end up having a very good season at two different levels this year.
Moving forward it is hard to determine the ceiling he has for the Pirates. This is the first season where he has been pitching well for the organization. He prefers to throw his breaking pitches more than his fastball, which could be an issue if he struggles with his control. If he can add some more velocity to his fastball and begin to rely on it more, it would bode well for his career potentially. He will likely remain in Greensboro the rest of the season. If he can continue to pitch as he did in Bradenton he could see Altoona next year by midseason. If that happens he could get a bump to Indy in 2026 or early 2027. Meaning if were to get a shot at the big league club it would be 27 or 28 more than likely. The issue however is he will be Rule 5 eligible this offseason, and is set to be a free agent by 2027. It is unlikely he will be selected in the Rule 5, however he will have to push to get more on the Pirates radar as a potential bullpen piece in the future. While that might be rough waters to sail for him, it is quite possible based on what he has shown this year that he push his way onto the Pirate Crew at some point in the future.