North Shore Nine

Welcome to the weekly Scouting Prospects; The Top 30 series. Each week we will take a look at a different one of the Pirates Top 30 prospects, with a few bonus “double drop” weeks. The format of these articles will highlight and discuss the following.

• Scouting Score
• Performance
• Expectations
• Projected Debut
  
  When it comes to scouting grades, the scale used is 20-80. So, a 20-30 grade would be considered well below average. A 40 is below average, 50 is average, 60 is above average (Also called Plus) and 70-80 is well above average (or Plus Plus). For prospects the overall grade is where scouts expect the player to perform once in the majors. For example, a 65 grade would be an All-Star caliber standout player, whereas a 50 would be an everyday player and a 40 would be a bench player.

Yordany De Los Santos:

De Los Santos was signed as an international prospect, he was rated as one of the best of the 2022 class. This was the same year the Pirates drafted Termarr Johnson, Thomas Harrington, Hunter Barco, Jack Brannigan and Michael Kennedy. So adding a player like De Los Santos to that group makes the year even better for Pirates Prospects.

De Los Santos is rated by scouts to have an average hit tool, just below average on power, running and fielding, with an average arm. He currently plays shortstop in the minors, though scout worry that he is not going to have the reaction time to stay there and that he might end up at third base where he has played some time at recently. Scouts like his tools but reports rave about a few items that are beyond the typical tools a player is graded on. These include items such as Baseball IQ, the instincts that he plays with along with a level of maturity above his age bracket. They also comment on the loud contact he makes as well as the feel he appears to have for the strike zone. He was a guy who got an aggressive push from the rookie league to low A Bradenton in 2023. He struggled there, being well below the average age for the league. He started 2024 back in the Florida rookie league, with an end of July/Early August promotion back to Bradenton.

The non metaphorical toss of De Los Santos into the deep end in 2023 with the promotion to Bradenton at 18, didn’t quiet backfire. While his numbers there were quite bad it appears to have worked very well for him in 2024. In 2024 he again started back in the rookie league, where he put up numbers even better than he had the year before. In 63 more plate appearances in 2024 in the rookie league, he has hit two more doubles, four more triples and four more homeruns. He has also seen increases in his ISO, BABIP, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and his wRC+ (Which was 146). This led back to Bradenton to start August of 2024. While results are early, he appears to be doing quite well there so far in his second time around and still only at 19 years of age.

Looking forward with De Los Santos is hard based on his age and this only being his second full season in Pro ball. However, unlike some of the other prospects at this point on the list he appears to be trending heavily upward. His phenomenal season in Rookie ball, added to his so far solid numbers in low A all point toward someone who will rank much higher moving into 2025 on prospect lists. As far as in system progression, he will likely start 2025 in Bradenton full-time. Which means he could see Greensboro late 2025, if all goes very well, if not then in 2026. Which would mean at the earlies you could see him on the Pirates radar in 2028 or 2029. That being said he will be Rule 5 eligible well before that in the 2026 offseason. Meaning the Pirates will have roughly two more full seasons to scout and determine if it is worth risking opening him to the Rule 5, or to protect him like they did this year with Cheng. All in all this will be a very important prospect to watch over the next few seasons.