Mike Burrows' path to majors could change returning from Tommy John
Could the Pirates get creative with how they use Mike Burrows upon his return from surgery?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have an incredible amount of pitching talent in their system, so much so it may be easy to get overlooked as one of those prospects.
It may become even easier to be overlooked if you missed most of the previous season due to an injury.
That’s where we are with Mike Burrows, who was expected to be part of the wave of prospects to make it to Pittsburgh in 2023 but underwent Tommy John after pitching 6.2 innings with Indianapolis.
An 11th-round pick back in 2018, Burrows worked his way into one of the best pitching prospects in the Pirates’ system.
After a short but successful stint in Greensboro during the 2021 season, Burrows jumped to Double-A and pitched well again.
In 12 starts, he posted a 2.94 ERA (3.94 xFIP) while striking out 32.4% of batters he faced across 52 innings pitched. He jumped to Triple-A in the middle of the season, where he saw his strikeout rate dip by 10% and put up a 5.31 ERA.
An injury may have played a part in that, missing most of September but returning to close things out. That may have been a bit premature, as he allowed six earned runs over two-thirds of an inning.
Removing that start actually dropped his ERA to 4.31, an entire run better.
In 2023, Burrows was added to the 40-man roster and expected to make his major league debut at some point. He even added a slider to try and help against righties, along with his fastball, curveball, and change-up.
Having the surgery so early in the season should allow him to return at some point in 2024, but his potential impact with the major league roster may have to wait until the following season.
Burrows is an excellent example for the pro-fastball-shape crowd, as he has one of the most appealing fastballs in the minors.
Of players tracked on Prospects Live (Florida State League, Triple-A), only four pitches with at least 50 four-seam fastballs thrown last year had a better inverted vertical break (20.4”).
The results weren’t there in the small sample size we got of him, but the injury explains that.
That does beg the question, when it comes to Burrows, what is the best way to utilize his talents in Pittsburgh?
It would be nice to have him remain a starter, but Burrows hasn’t been the most durable of pitchers in the system. Since returning from the COVID shutdown season in 2021, he’s missed some form of time due to injury each year.
He fell just short of 100 innings in 2022, throwing 94.1, but hasn’t pitched more than 50 in any other season during his minor league career.
Both his fastball and curveball are generally seen as plus pitchers, so throwing him in the bullpen as a multi-inning guy is something that Burrows could have a lot of success with.
It also does allow him to slowly work his way back during a season that he is going to have pitch restrictions anyway, and if you want to work him back into the rotation in 2025, you can always do that.
Burrows had come a long way with his third pitch, the change-up, in 2022 to make it a legitimate weapon, and then added in the slider, so he has come a long way in making himself more of a starter.
Just with the injury history, it may be the best way to ensure the Pirates get the most out of his talents.
Going into the 2023 season, there was a legitimate argument to be had that Burrows was the best pitching prospect in the system, so the talent is there. The injury history is a concern, so the Pirates could benefit from getting a little creative with how they use him once he makes his debut.
Very well written and presented. I see him as a SP, but it would probably serve him well to get opportunities to pitch less innings per game and therefore, less pitches. When he feels able, then maybe he can be stretched out to 3 or 4 innings, and possibly as a Starter in bullpen games.
Constantly im hearing writers talking about using our top prospect talent as multi inning relievers and the lack of baseball knowledge that suggests blows my mind. 1. Relief pitchers are cheap and replaceable, so taking your top talent and devaluing it would be idiotic. 2. We need starting pitching, badly. 3. Starting pitching cannot be bought via free agency anymore, and noone wants to trade it 4. If a player isn't able to get back until mid-season, an innings limit is moot because he's only tossing for a few months 12.starts at 6 innings would be less than 75 innings. There's no way he'd be able to.do more than that. You cant have someone toss 15 games at 2-3 innings and then expect them to be a useful starter the following year, its ridiculous its just impossible to increase the load enough safely. He needs as many healthy innings as possible in 2024 if he's able to be a starter in 2025. You cant look past that.