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Heading into the 2024 Draft, Griffin was ranked as MLB Pipeline’s No. 9 prospect and the top prep player in the entire class. Pipeline gave Griffin a 60 grade on the 20-80 scouting scale and said he had “a big league frame at 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds and he possesses five-tool potential.” Griffin had the best raw tools in the Draft class, but concerns about his hit tool put him a tier below the top-end talents.

Griffin was ultimately selected ninth overall by the Pirates, this coming the year after Pittsburgh selected Paul Skenes first overall in the 2023 Draft. The Pirates shut down Griffin after being drafted, meaning we wouldn’t see him in his first pro action until 2025.

Entering the 2025 season, Griffin was ranked as Pipeline’s No. 43 prospect, but he quickly began his ascent up the ranks. Across three levels (he ended with Double-A Altoona), Griffin posted a .333/.415/.527 slash line in 122 games with 21 home runs and 65 stolen bases. Notably, Griffin was even better as he climbed the ladder, posting a .961 OPS in 21 Double-A games.

By season’s end, Griffin was Pipeline’s top prospect and he’s only reinforced that status with his dominant Spring Training in 2026.”I just felt prepared for what was about to be thrown my way,” Griffin told MLB Network’s Hot Stove during Spring Training. “Last year, I didn’t know much about big league camp, but with a full offseason and taking [lessons] from last year, it just helped me come into spring feeling great.”

Konnor Griffin, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ top prospect, trained at Grit Training in Flowood, Mississippi, with instructor Josh DeMoney, near his high school. He also traveled to Maven Baseball in Atlanta, Georgia, for advanced swing analysis on force plates, and participated in the Perfect Game circuit before joining the Pirates’ organization

The first time Konnor Griffin visited Maven Baseball Lab in Atlanta, he did something no one there had ever seen. Since opening in 2022, Maven has assessed thousands of baseball players with force plates that use sensors to measure the amount of energy being transferred into the ground during a swing. Griffin was the top-ranked 16-year-old in the country, a 6-foot-4, 200-pound specimen, and the plate was no match for him.

Griffin entered camp with an opportunity to win Pittsburgh’s every-day shortstop job. Regardless of whether he secures an Opening Day roster spot, Griffin will debut at some point this season and join Paul Skenes as the best pair of young players on any team in baseball. Now, two years after missing out on earning a first-round draft pick because they kept Skenes in the minor leagues to start the season — after he won the National League Rookie of the Year, they would have been awarded the pick through the prospect promotion incentive program — the Pirates face a similar conundrum with Griffin. It’s not exactly apples to apples. Skenes spent three years in college and was two weeks shy of his 22^nd birthday when he arrived in May 2024. Griffin would be the first teenage hitter to debut on Opening Day since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1989. The Pirates are nonetheless entertaining the possibility — because they have postseason aspirations, sure, but more because Griffin is forcing them to. Inviting him to major league camp last spring just seven months after selecting him in the 2024 MLB draft, then watching him smash an opposite-field home run in his first Grapefruit League game, intimated the Pirates were open to fast-tracking Griffin, but to suggest anyone foresaw what followed — a .333/.415/.527 line with 21 home runs, 65 stolen bases and sterling shortstop defense across Single-A, High-A and Double-A — would be wrong. This, as those at Maven will attest, i

              Even if you’re not a pirates fan, it is majorly fun to watch because you  get  to see a player grow his ranks and is seen a prodigy. “I fully trust what the front office and the coaches and everybody have done, how they’re going about it,” Griffin said. “They’ve done a great job so far allowing me to be free in the minor leagues and be able to move and continue to face challenges. But this spring, I’m really trying not to think about it too much. There’s a lot of noise. I’m just trying to treat it just like I did last spring. I knew I had no chance of just making the big league team. And so every day I was just trying to be a sponge and soak up the advice of these great players who’ve been through it. And I’m trying to do the same thing this year. I know there could be a chance I make the big leagues at some point soon, and that’s great, but I just want to feel ready.”

“I fully trust what the front office and the coaches and everybody have done, how they’re going about it,” Griffin said. “They’ve done a great job so far allowing me to be free in the minor leagues and be able to move and continue to face challenges. But this spring, I’m really trying not to think about it too much. There’s a lot of noise. I’m just trying to treat it just like I did last spring. I knew I had no chance of just making the big league team. And so every day I was just trying to be a sponge and soak up the advice of these great players who’ve been through it. And I’m trying to do the same thing this year. I know there could be a chance I make the big leagues at some point soon, and that’s great, but I just want to feel ready.”

There are many expectations we have about the youngest MLB player, but with his extensive training, hard dedication in Baseball, and never gave up on his goals even though they may have taken a sabbatical for his baseball career. I think Konnor Griffin is a role model when it comes to sports, his training, records, and homeruns. What would happen if Konnor Griffin gave up on baseball when he was overwhelmed. Would he had never played again? We’d be robbed of watching an All Star play baseball