Welcome back to our weekly round up on prospects within the Pirates system. We highlight three prospects that are looking great (or less than great) and talk about their potential future contributions. Today starts with a look at Seth Hernandez, the Pirates most recent first round draft pick and the second time he has appeared on this list.
Seth Hernandez
They need to get Seth Hernandez out of Bradenton already because he is simply abusing the poor hitters in A ball at the moment. He has struck out 23 batters in 12 innings, and has generated a mind boggling 43 whiffs. His ERA sits at 0.75 after one earned run given up early in his first start, and he has simply stopped allowing batters to get hits. While his fastball and cutter are his bread and butter pitches, his curveball has been making hitters look foolish through out the early season too. It is extremely rare that any pitcher has four quality pitches that grade out to over 100 on Stuff+, let alone a 19-year-old kid having these weapons at his disposal. The two questions that we must ask about Seth are does he hit AA before turning 20 and does he find himself within the top 10 prospects in baseball by the time the season ends. He has been that dominant early that we can reasonably speculate that he can find a path to the majors before his 21st birthday, a feat that is almost unheard of from pitching prospects.
Murf Gray
We don’t have to leave Bradenton to find our next shining star, as another 2025 draft class prospect has been destroying A ball since the beginning of the season. Murf Gray was a third round pick and went 73rd overall last year, and he is making himself look like one of the early steals of the draft. The 22-year-old out of Fresno State is currently rocking a 225 wRC+, and is slashing .375/.479/.700 in his first 50 at-bats in professional baseball. It should be noted that he is 22 years old and facing mostly teenagers, but the biggest plus for me is seeing the underlying metrics. Murf is doing what I consider the most important thing to look for in good prospects, and that is showing an ability to hit professional pitcher’s breaking balls. Our good friend Anthony Murphy breaks it down like this:
More contact is going to be essential, but it is clear that Murf does real damage against the type of balls that end the careers of minor league hitters. I am buying lots of Murf stock early and believe he is going to be the big hitting prospect that breaks out for the Pirates.
Jhostynxon Garcia
After an extremely promising Spring Training, The Password looks utterly lost at the plate over the first couple of weeks of the AAA season. Garcia is currently slashing just .158/.186/.175 for a wRC+ of -6. With Billy Cook and Jake Mangum being somewhat underwhelming for the Pirates early on in the season, it seemed natural that Jhostynxon would be someone to come up and give the lineup an extra boost. Instead, he’s been the worst hitter for Indianapolis so far. He’s also striking out quite a bit, running a strikeout rate of 28% and a walk rate under 4%. Luckily, we are dealing with a very small sample size here and Garcia has proven the ability to hit AAA pitching before. However, the hope that he would be a big contributor on the 2026 Pirates seems to be slipping away somewhat, and luckily Johan Oviedo is made of Swiss cheese and cannot stay healthy or else the trade would be raising eyebrows.
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