Pittsburgh Pirates 2024 Minor League Previews: Indianapolis

Paul Skenes headlines Indy's roster

Paul Skenes Photo Credit: WTM

It’s going to be hard for nearly anybody on the Indianapolis Indians to attract much attention, at least for a while. The top pick in the 2023 draft, Paul Skenes, will open the season there. Indy will, though, have several others who’ve ranked toward the top of the Pirates’ prospect list in recent years. It’ll also have a large number of more experienced players who are looking for a chance to play a role in the majors. Overall, once you get past the handful of prospects, the hitters seem much more interesting than the pitchers.

Catcher

Indy will start the season with three catchers: Carter Bins, Grant Koch, and Eli Wilson. That could conceivably change if Ali Sanchez clears waivers and accepts assignment to AAA, but it’s hard to envision that happening. Bins figures to be the principal backstop. He’s a power-over-hit player who seemed like a good prospect when the Pirates acquired him from Seattle in the Tyler Anderson trade. He struggled to make contact at Indy in 2022, batting just .208 albeit with some power. He missed nearly all of 2023 with a leg injury but hit well in spring training this year, so maybe he can get back on track. The bat matters because the defense isn’t a strong suit.

Koch was drafted in 2018 as an offense-oriented catcher, but the bat didn’t come around. He’s been an organizational catcher the last couple of years and played in 60 games for Indy in 2023, hitting decently with a .709 OPS. Wilson has generally shown solid all-around ability, but he keeps getting stuck behind higher-profile prospects and hasn’t gotten consistent playing time. He’s also played some third. In 2023, he played 65 games with Greensboro and Altoona and hit fairly well.

Infield

The infield will feature the two most prominent position players on the team, Liover Peguero and Nick Gonzales. They’ll make up the keystone combo, probably switching back and forth some, although Peguero’s the real shortstop. Both need big showings to stop their slides from top prospect status. That’s more true of Gonzales, a former seventh-overall draft pick who’ll turn 25 in May. Peguero, on the other hand, is still only 23 and essentially skipped AAA before being called up last year. Both have a very clear mission: cut back on the swing-and-miss problem that plagues nearly all the hitters in the system. They’ll be backed up by Sergio Alcantara, who’s the same player as Alika Williams.

The infield corners will have three players who’ve shown promise in the past. Most prominent is Jake Lamb. He seemed to have settled in for a long stay as the third baseman in Arizona, back in 2016-17, including an all-star season the latter year. Then shoulder problems intervened. Teams have repeatedly given him chances to bounce back since then, including time in the majors every year, but it hasn’t worked out. He did have a good spring, much better than Rowdy Tellez, anyway.

Joe Perez was a second-round pick of the Astros in 2017 and, at 24, can’t be called a minor-league veteran. In fact, it was a little surprising Houston released him, although his minor league performance has been just decent. Malcom Nunez just turned 23, which is a perfectly good age for AAA. He came from St. Louis in the Jose Quintana deal in the midst of a very good 2022 season in AA. He had a very bad, injury-plagued season in AAA in 2023. Lamb, Perez and Nunez could all play first or third, although Perez and Nunez, at least, probably don’t have a future at third. Lamb and Perez could see some time in the outfield.

Outfield

Three of the Indy outfielders already have significant major league experience. Two — Gilberto Celestino and Billy McKinney — had very good springs this year. Celestino is a legit center fielder whose time in the upper minors has gotten disrupted; in 2020 by the pandemic, by premature callups in 2021 and 2022, and by a thumb injury in 2023. McKinney is a corner outfielder with good power who hasn’t quite hit enough to stick in parts of six seasons in the majors. He has a .865 OPS over 280 AAA games.

The other outfielders are Joshua Palacios, Matt Gorski, and Dustin Peterson. Palacios got a lot of attention late last year with a string of late-inning hitting heroics, but overall he didn’t really hit that well. His chances of making the team weren’t helped when he missed much of March. It also doesn’t help that he’s a left-handed hitter on a team that already has Jack Suwinski and Rowdy Tellez in the starting lineup.

Gorski is one of several hitters in the Pirates’ system afflicted with Greensboro Syndrome, which involved making hay in the gopher haven at Greensboro only to find the going much tougher in the upper minors. Gorski possesses considerable athleticism and power potential but has to make more contact. Peterson was a second-round pick of the Padres way back in 2013 but hasn’t hit much as a pro and has played only 19 games in the majors. He’s now 29.

Starting Pitching

At one point or another, Indy could see a string of very high-ceiling pitching prospects. There won’t be so many to start the season, though, with Jared Jones in Pittsburgh and Bubba Chandler and Anthony Solometo slated to open at Altoona. That leaves Skenes as the attention-grabber. He’ll be in Pittsburgh at whatever point is the most convenient for Bob Nutting’s wallet. But Quinn Priester shouldn’t be forgotten. He seems to be going through the same laborious adjustment process that Mitch Keller went through, but he’s almost certain to be back in Pittsburgh this year.

Easily the most interesting of the possible other starters is lefty Eric Lauer. He had decent seasons for the Padres in 2018-19 and very good ones for Milwaukee in 2021-22, but his 2023 season was undermined by injuries. He signed late and just started pitching a few days ago. He also has an opt-out date on May 15 (check here to see opt-out dates for players on minor league deals) and the Pirates probably aren’t going to want to lose him if he’s looking good in AAA. The only other pitcher who seems an obvious candidate to start is Michael Plassmeyer. He’s a finesse lefty who’s thrown just a few innings in the majors and has a 4.48 ERA over 197 innings in AAA.

Other starts, or bulk innings, could come from lefty Cam Alldred or righties Kade McClure or Wily Peralta. Alldred threw one inning for the Pirates in 2022 and did a good job in relief moving up through the system. He pitched much of the time as a starter in 2023 for Indy, although that didn’t go so well, as he had a 5.20 ERA. McClure is 6’7”, but he’s more of a finesse guy and got hit progressively harder as he moved up through the White Sox’ system as a starter. The Sox moved him to relief in 2022, and then he missed most of 2023, so he may be a better candidate for the bullpen.

Peralta was a fixture in the Milwaukee rotation way back in 2013-16. His velocity dropped after his best years, and he also started experiencing control problems. He had a good year in relief with the Royals in 2018, then a bad one in 2019 that got him released. He didn’t resurface until 2021 when he pitched well in 18 starts for the Tigers. He had a 2.58 ERA in relief for them in about half a season in 2022, followed by a very bad season as a starter in AAA in 2023 for Washington. Peralta’s always tended to have peripheral stats that weren’t as good as his ERA, so between that and the question of starting or relieving, it’s impossible to know what the Pirates might do with him. He did pitch well in March.

In case you’re wondering, Domingo German is not on Indy’s preliminary roster.

Relievers

Colin Selby and Kyle Nicolas are the relievers to watch. Both have shown swing-and-miss stuff since moving to relief, but both also have inconsistent command. Each one had some good outings for the Pirates late last year, but both had very disappointing springs. A good stretch with Indy could get either or both back to Pittsburgh, especially with the bullpen looking like it could be hampered by injuries.

Two interesting relievers the Pirates brought in on minor-league deals are Brent Honeywell and Connor Sadzeck. Honeywell was a top Rays’ prospect for years, partly on the strength of a screwball, but he ran into a stunning series of elbow problems. He had a very good spring and a lot of folks thought he’d make the team. He doesn’t appear to have exercised his March 25 opt-out, but he has another one coming up on May 1. Sadzeck is a big guy who’s had a lot of ups and downs over his career, a lot of it either injury- or control-related. He didn’t have a good spring.

The remaining relievers are righty J.C. Flowers and lefties Geronimo Franzua and Brady Feigl. The Pirates selected Flowers in the fourth round in 2019 and he’s generally pitched well as he’s moved up, including a good year for Altoona when he moved to relief in 2022. Things totally fell apart for him with Indy in 2023, with a 9.39 ERA, so he’ll be looking to bounce back.

Franzua is something of a mystery. Houston released him in 2013 after three seasons in the Dominican Summer League. He was out of organized ball for four years, then resurfaced in Japan, where he had several strong seasons in relief before running into injury problems. The Pirates signed him to a two-year minor league deal starting last year when he finally made his debut in US-affiliated baseball at age 29. He pitched at three levels, finishing with Altoona, and had poor numbers. The Pirates are starting him in AAA anyway, so they must think the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Feigl is a lefty control artist who’s generally had good numbers in relief but whose career has been interrupted several times by injuries. He seems to have a doppelganger, another minor league pitcher named Brady Feigl, who looks an awful lot like him.