Morning Rundown: Top 25 day! Pirates sign pair of minor league pitchers, Ke'Bryan darkhorse MVP
Bucs on Deck top 25 prospects releases today, Pirates sign a pair of minor league pitchers, and Ke'Bryan Hayes mentioned on MLB.com
The Pittsburgh Pirates signed a pair of pitchers to minor league contracts on Thursday.
Connor Sadzeck, 32, was an 11th-round pick back in 2011 by the Texas Rangers. Last year pitching for the St. Paul Saints in the Minnesota Twins organization, Sadzeck posted a 1-3 record, with a 5.40 ERA and 42 strikeouts in 35 innings pitched.
Prospect’s Live has registered him primarily throwing a slider, four-seam, and sinker. All three pitches picked up about a 25% whiff rate.
Kade McClure, 27, was a sixth-round pick by the Chicago White Sox out of Louisville. He’s yet to make his major league debut and pitched nine games with the Sacramento River Cats.
He posted a 5.79 ERA with 11 walks and 13 strikeouts in 23.1 innings pitched.
MLB.com went through their choices for potential MVP candidates for the upcoming 2024 season. There were a lot of familiar names at the top, with Mookie Betts and Julio Rodriguez listed as the favorites for their respective league.
They also had a few ‘dark horses’ who could surprise many and get into the MVP picture.
Ke’Bryan Hayes was listed as one of them, namely for the ‘high floor’ he presents due to his elite defense. They also mention his strong 8.3 WAR since 2022 despite him being slightly below average at the plate (97 wRC+), and if the hitting improves to above-average, he enters a whole new conversation due to his defensive prowess.
After a weeks worth of lead-up, our top 25 prospects in the Pirates system will be released later today.
Here’s a quick look at what we’ve done so far this week leading up to today’s release.
We each picked three players that didn’t make the top 25 we are watching heading into the 2024 season.
It was fun seeing who each of us selected, as there weren’t really any parameters, only that they couldn’t have voted for them to make the top 25. Other than that, they were free to pick whoever they felt was worth monitoring this season.
Monday we took a look at the three players who just missed out on the top 25. With Quinn Priester just needing one out before graduating, we may be dipping into this list very early to update things.
After thanking the crew here for the book promotion yesterday, I have to thank everyone who purchased it today. Anthony was kind enough to leave the link up top today (the purple link that says Buy "They Call Him Dots"). It debuted as the 20th best selling baseball book on Amazon sales. It moved up to 11th by mid-day, one spot ahead of Keith Law's latest offering. Amazon's chart heavily favors recent sales, but you don't get to #11 with a handful of quick sales. So thank you to everyone who purchased it over the last 36 hours. It's appreciated. I possibly won't have to pretend to be mad at any relatives around the holidays so I can knock them off my gift-giving list :)
Bold prediction: Reynolds has career year and yet his WAR is surpassed by both Cruz and Hayes this year.
(I think I made this same bold prediction last year.)