Breakout Candidates Among the Pirates' Lower-Level Pitchers

Some possible pop-up prospects.

Jan 22, 2025

The Pirates have had a lot of pitching prospects emerge. There are the big names, of course; Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, and Bubba Chandler. There’ve also been some guys who were sort of on the radar screen to begin with but had good 2024 seasons, like Thomas Harrington and Hunter Barco. But they’ve had some pitchers put themselves on the screen, like Carlson Reed and the departed Patrick Reilly.

This is a look at some guys at the lower levels of the system who could potentially emerge in 2025. Players are listed according to where they finished the 2024 season.

Greensboro

There were pitchers last year who haven’t quite broken out, but who’ve attracted some attention, like Alessandro Ercolani and Wilber Dotel. I’m going to stick to pitchers who aren’t on the screen yet.

Carlos Jimenez: Jimenez has always had excellent stuff. What’s held him back has been control and injuries. His fastball sits around 94-95 mph, and he has one of the better changeups in the system. He also has a potentially good curve. He opened three seasons at Bradenton, missing part of 2022 and most of 2023. In 2024, he put up some pretty strange stats, allowing just 47 hits and fanning 88 in 71 innings, but he walked 66. The Pirates moved him gradually to relief after the early season, and he made a lot of progress, allowing opponents just a .486 OPS in August. His last four outings came with Greensboro. If the Pirates are lucky, Jimenez could take the same sort of leap forward as a reliever in 2025 that Luis Peralta did in 2024.

Ryan Harbin: Harbin’s missed a lot of time since being drafted out of high school way back in 2019. In his first four years, he only threw about 40 total innings. He missed much of the first two months of 2024 as well. He spent most of the season at Greensboro and fanned 55 in 38.1 IP there, but poor control led to a 5.40 ERA. He sits around 96 now and throws a cutter and slider. Harbin’s in somewhat the same boat as Jimenez, except he’s already a reliever. He mainly needs to be healthy for a full year.

Garrett McMillan: McMillan may have made more dramatic progress than anybody else in the system in 2024. A 14th-round draft pick in 2023, he looked like a bullpen filler initially. He had a terrible time in April with Bradenton (opponents’ OPS of 1.083) but improved rapidly and got a late promotion to Greensboro, where he dominated in seven games, including three starts. McMillan doesn’t have overwhelming stuff. He throws four pitches, with a fastball of about 91-93 mph and no big swing-and-miss pitch among his secondaries. His walk and K rates so far, though, have been excellent. The big question is whether his command is good enough that his stuff will play at higher levels.

Bradenton

Khristian Curtis: Curtis falls into a category the Pirates have been happy to take chances within the middle and late rounds: a college pitcher with (in his case) an extensive injury history, as well as some control issues. As a result of a botched Tommy John surgery, Curtis suffered nerve damage that still affects his right hand. His fastball is sometimes in the mid-90s, and he misses bats with his slider. Control is still an issue at times. Curtis had an uneven season in 2024 with Bradenton, mainly for one specific reason: he typically dominated over the first two innings of his starts, then started struggling in the third, something his splits show clearly. Whether this is the lingering effects of the nerve problem, a stamina issue mainly due to all the time he missed in college, or something else is hard to say. Curtis’ stuff, though, is very good and he could take a big step forward if he can stay effective further into games.

Antwone Kelly: Kelly is a short (5’10”), stocky right-hander whom the Pirates brought along slowly in his first three years. At Bradenton in 2024, they moved him to the rotation. He was outstanding in May and June, then went out for most of the rest of the year with an unknown injury. He came back for three rough outings that messed up his final numbers. Kelly’s fastball sat in the mid-90s in 2024 and he has a good change, along with a cutter. The stuff is there for him to move forward as a starter, at least for now, especially with a healthy season.

FCL Pirates

To some degree, every pitcher in the FCL is a breakout candidate. Besides obvious choices like Zander Mueth and David Matoma, it’s pretty much a crapshoot guessing who might step forward. I wanted to list one pitcher, though . . . .

Dioris Martinez: Anthony Murphy discussed Martinez the other day, so I won’t rehash it. Suffice to say, he reaches 96-97 mph with his fastball and has a good slider. In his very limited time during his first two pro years, he’s been hard to hit but has had poor walk and K rates. What interests me is that, even though he hasn’t pitched much yet, the Pirates seem to be trying to move him somewhat aggressively. It’ll be worth watching to see whether and when they move him to Bradenton in 2025.

2024 Draft

Gavin Adams: An 8th-round draft pick, Adams is another pick coming off Tommy John surgery. In fact, he never pitched at a four-year college. He pitched two years in JC ball, then went to Florida State, but had the surgery before he ever appeared there. He had control problems when he pitched, so there’s a lot of risk here, but he’s shown triple-digit velocity and missed a lot of bats. Some scouts consider his slider and change both to be potentially above average as well. So there’s a great deal of upside here if the control comes around. Depending on when he’s able to take the mound, though, Adams may be more of a breakout candidate for 2026 than 2025.

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