Through May 15th (full disclosure, I’m pre-writing this before the long weekend), the best hitter in the minor leagues, any league and any level, with a minimum of 100PA is New Hampshire Fisher Cats outfielder Yohendrick Pinango. His 205 wRC+ is tied with Dodgers farm hand Mike Sirota, although his has two levels higher (at AA instead of almost all A). The next best high minors hitter, 30 year old former major leaguer Nick Solak, is 18 points behind him. Not bad for half the trade return for Nate Pearson, he of a 4.63 ERA since the trade.
Pinango, 23, was signed by the Cubs out of his native Venezuela back in 2018. He had a great rookie ball debut the following season, but after the 2020 off year he spent the next three seasons producing middling results, mostly in A+, and had largely fallen off the prospect radar. He’s a below average runner and not a great defender in left field, which puts all of the weight on his bat if he’s going to have any kind of major league role. Although he produced solid contact numbers, his power output was limited and he didn’t walk much, resulting in slightly below average batting lines that weren’t enough to keep him interesting.
Things took a positive turn for Pinango early last season. His walk rate spiked to 16%, his first time in double digits for his career, he cut his strikeout rate to 12%, and he clubbed 5 home runs in the 122 PA of his fourth tour of duty in High A. That finally earned him a promotion to AA, where he continued to walk (11%), but where his power faded and his strikeouts popped back up to a fine but less compelling 21%. Still, that brief flash at A+ made him briefly interesting, and the Cubs capitalized by shipping him to Toronto. He scuffled following the trade, with his walk rate falling back towards career norms and his power drying up completely.
Little of that reads as particularly promising. In our prospect rankings over the winter, neither of Matt or I seriously considered ranking him. The returns this season suggest that will have been an oversight.
Through his career, Pinango had been a free swinger. His career low swing rate coming into last season was 51.6% in 2023, which would be in about the 85th percentile in MLB. In his 2024 A+ stint, he radically overhauled his approach, cutting his swing rate to 38.7%, which would be in the bottom ten in the majors. That new approach came with a career best 83.6% contact rate, well above average. His aggression returned somewhat in AA, and his contact dipped back to the 80% mark, but he was still significantly more selective than he had been earlier in his career. In 2025, he’s returned to the ultra selective approach, swinging just 38.1% of the time, and his contact rate is back to 81.5%. He’s whiffing on just 7% of the pitches he sees, in the 93rd percentile among AA hitters with at least 50 PA.
Paired with his newfound patience, Pinango is producing power numbers that are a solid cut above anything he’s previously shown outside of the brief blip early last year. Delta Dental Stadium tends to caricature left handed power, so his 6 home runs in 131 PA are probably somewhat inflated. Per some StatCast data released by Baseball America (which is able to source numbers that aren’t publicly available from the Eastern League), he’s reached an exit velocity of 112mph this season and has hit 10% of his balls in play at over 108.5mph, both of which translate to 60 grade raw power on the 20-80 scouting scale.
It’s hard to tell how much to make of all this. 130 hot PA can’t overwrite years of middling performance. Visually, his swing doesn’t look like it’s been radically altered. He starts from an upright, slightly open stance and takes a small stride, landing slightly closed to the plate. His hand load is fairly deep and his swing looks a little long, which might eventually portend issues with high end velocity although he has good bat speed and keeps the barrel in the zone a long time. None of that is much changed from videos of him three years ago in the Cubs system. His batted ball distribution also isn’t much changed, with similar pull and ground ball rates to previous seasons. All that argues that this might be a blip.
On the other hand, scouting reports have praised his pure hitting ability for years, even if it didn’t regularly show up in the box score, and it’s hard to argue with his demonstrated approach, knack for contact, and raw power. The tools are clearly there, so it’s plausible that this is just ability he always had finally actualizing.
Which story proves to be true will be something to watch for the remainder of the season. Pinango is already 23 and Rule 5 draft eligible, so if he has a future in Toronto we’ll likely know by Christmas. The offensive bar will be high for him to carve out an everyday role, but all around left handed bats are something any team would be happy to have more of.