Can Joshua Palacios turn clutch hitting into a starting job for Pirates?

After being one of the most clutch hitters in baseball last year, Palacios eyeing starting spot in right field

Photo Credit: WTM

When the Pittsburgh Pirates got a big hit, with the game was on the line, there was a good chance that Joshua Palacios was the guy delivering it.

A pick up from the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft, Palacios began the 2023 season with the Altoona Curve, before destroying Triple-A, and landing in Pittsburgh where he played in 91 games.

It became almost a comical joke at how certain it be that Palacios would come up with the big it, but the numbers backed it up. He posted a 159 wRC+ in ‘high leverage’ situations, and then 119 with runners in scoring position.

While generally those kind of situations have a lot of variance from year to year, there is parts of Palacios’ game that could translate to success outside of the ‘clutch’ times.

An overall 83 wRC+ isn’t ideal, Palacios has the type of tools to make enough noise in Bradenton to walk away with one of the starting jobs in the Pirates’ lineup.

Palacios owns four separate double digit stolen base seasons while in the minors, and posted a sprint speed that put him in the 72nd percentile among major league players. He was also a perfect five for five in stolen base attempts in the majors last year.

He had an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph, which was well above average if he had qualified and almost half of his batted balls came in at 95 mph or higher.

The batted ball data says that he might have even outperformed what showed in the box score in 2023, as his expected batting average and slugging were both better than his actual numbers.

Palacios will have to fight off Edward Olivares, who hit a triple in the Spring Training opener, and Canaan Smith-Njigba.

The fact that he spent some time in center field last year could give him a leg up on the other two, but he’ll have to make more of a case this spring to work his way into a platoon type role as opposed to a straight back up.

Olivares put up a better wRC+ (95) against righties did than Palacios (84) last year, with the gap between the two even wider looking at their career marks.

When it comes to Spring position battles, the second base one gets the majority of the attention, for just cause at times due to the names involved, but seeing how the potential right field rotation shapes out will be another key thing to watch.