MLB Pipeline and Baseball America each released their minor league All-Star selections for the 2022 season on Monday. Both lists named Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Endy Rodriguez as the first-team All-Star at the catcher position.
The 22-year-old Rodriguez began the season with High-A Greensboro, where he hit .302/.392/.544 in 88 games. That was even after a slow start to the season that saw him put up a .652 OPS in April. Whether it was a coincidence or not, his improvements seemed to coincide with the Pirates letting him concentrate more often on catching. He was learning first base in April, but never played the spot after April 26th, while seeing less time at second base and left field at the same point. He last played outfield on July 1st.
Rodriguez was promoted to Double-A Altoona in August, where he hit .356/.442/.678 in 31 games. When the Altoona season ended and Triple-A Indianapolis still had nine games left, Rodriguez was among a group of players who moved up for more action. He played six games for the Indians, hitting .455/.435/.773 in 23 plate appearances. Between all three stops, he hit .323/.407/.590 in 125 games, with 92 runs, 39 doubles, four triples, 25 homers, 95 RBIs and 60 walks.
Pipeline’s list can be found here.
Baseball America’s list can be found here. They not that he had the highest OPS in the minors over the final three months of the season.
+ postsJohn started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
I hope Endy continues tearing up AAA next season, eventually hits the Show with the Bucs, tears up again and for once this will not be the Pirates fans but rather the Mets fans seeing what they could have had instead of Lucchesi……………. I know that they have Alvarez already but the tandem of Alvarez and Endy would be great. We have potentially a great tandem with Endy and Hank here as well.
Endy gets my vote for Pirate minor league player of the year, with Gorski second.
Hard to imagine anyone else is even in the running for the top spot (though Gorski could have had a case if not for missing so much time).
In yesterday’s interview, BC seemed quite excited that Endy was going to be catching in Dominican Winter Ball. Seems to be a big deal for a 22-year old that he’d be invited and offered the catcher position. This would be the real recognition bonus that will give Endy some super valuable experience catching (and hitting against) some top arms. Yes, we have some high level catcher competition going on!…….just a couple years after the shelves were completely empty.
A tremendous honor for Endy and the Pirates. Was Francisco Alvarez qualified for consideration on these Prospect Teams? If so, even a bigger honor for Endy and the Pirates.
JD, any chance you could give us a tease with your top 5 prospects headed into 2023?
I’m guessing some order of Endy, Priester, Johnson, Davis & Ortiz? Does Ortiz crack the top 5? I think he would be 5a and Burrows would be 5b
I don’t have the list, but I can tell you that Davis, Johnson, Endy are definitely top three right now, not sure of the order. I’m still very high on Peguero, so he is top five I believe, either 4-5. Burrows and Priester are right there with each other, probably both behind him. Ortiz would be after them and it’s because the things that kept him in the lower top 30 rankings for almost the entire season still showed in Indy and the majors. I love the upside, but there are definitely consistency issues to be worried about (as far as him being a top of the rotation pitcher) and he really has a reliever profile when you look past the stamina. If his changeup isn’t working, he becomes a two-pitch guy, but sometimes his slider is off or his control and upper level hitters are going to expose that even more than AA hitters did this year.
The reason I brought up Ortiz is Fangraphs said he’d be in their updated top 100.
I don’t doubt his upside, I’d really just like to see more consistency. He still has work to do before he can be counted on to be a strong starter, but everything is there for it. It does feel like a switch may have flipped in August, but also it could just be a strong stretch as well and he came to the majors on a hot streak (first Indy start aside of course). I believe everyone else I named is a top 100 prospect, but I don’t see him in that class yet.
I’m not surprised that Fangraphs will have him there because they like to bet on upside and don’t like to factor in risk to get there as much as everyone else. If that’s true, then Bubba Chandler should be top 100 as well for them because he has many of the same traits, just four years younger.
I think the big difference here is Ortiz did it on the biggest stage, where Bubba is in low A.
But John, how can we expect Ortiz to be a top 100 prospect if we don’t make him a top 100 prospect?!
🤡🤡🤡
I was hoping to see an announcement that he was going to join the Pirates for the final series of the year the way Cruz did last year, but I guess that’s too much to hope for from this mismanagement group.
Y’all need a reality check and learn how to manage your expectations.
What a weird thing to be annoyed at.
I know it wasn’t going to happen. He was posting photos from his home on Instagram stories 2-3 days ago
Long season, give him a break.
And to think we could have had Joey Lucchesi.
But we need a lefty starter! if we had Lucchesi we probably wouldn’t had signed Quintana and look how that turned out.
🤓
I think Lucchesi’s even been injured most of the season, which makes it even more lopsided.
A blessing that we had very little Catching talent in the minors at the time of that trade.