Rowdy Tellez has bounce-back, but limited, upside

First base signing offers limited skillset for the Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates will have a familiar face handling first base for them in 2024 after coming to terms with Rowdy Tellez on a one-year contract.

Tellez had played with the Milwaukee Brewers since 2021 when he was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays. He was non-tendered during the off-season when the Pirates eventually signed him.

History - Tellez hit 35 home runs for the Brewers in 2023, posting a 110 wRC+ while batting .219/.306/.461. He did that over 599 plate appearances, playing in 153 games for the Brewers.

This past season, he hit just 13 over 351 plate appearances. That’s a 22-home run pace over the same number of plate appearances he had in 2022. He had a wRC+ of just 78, with a slash of .215/.291/.376.

What he brings - Power.

There’s no confusion in what Tellez was brought in to do, and that was to hit for power. Tellez’s numbers are all over the place. He’s a career .233 but doesn’t have a ton of swing and miss to his game. His highest strikeout rate in the majors was 28.8%, which was his rookie year, and while in Milwaukee, he hasn’t gone above 25%.

FanGraphs says his In-Zone contact rate is 85% during his career, which is not what you would expect from his profile.

He made better contact in 2023 than during the 2022 35-home run campaign, he wasn’t making the same quality of contact. His barrel rate was in the 88th percentile during that year, with his expected slugging percentage in the 90th. He was making contact, and it was consistently solid.

The main difference was the quality of contact against breaking pitches. In 2022, he had an expected slugging percentage of .425, which dropped to .308 this past season.

How he fits - While you could argue it wasn’t at the top of their priority list, adding another first baseman was definitely on there somewhere. The Pirates have continually gone the one-year, plug-and-play stopgap at the position, as there aren’t any options in the system to fill the position currently.

He fits perfectly in the ‘looking for a bounce-back’ mold that they like to go for.

There’s a lot of room for him to return to his 2022 form, but the fact is he is a platoon hitter who hit 31 of his 35 home runs against righties that year. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where he can repeat that with limited playing time.

Considering all of that, it’s easy to see where he’s always hovered around league average when it comes to WAR and wRC+ throughout his career, even with his peak.

He certainly shores up part of the puzzle, which likely points to Connor Joe getting time at first again this year, which also means they will need another outfielder to take his place when he is there.