Morning Rundown: Po-Yu Chen Strikes Out 12, Baseball America Updates Team Lists

Greensboro pitcher records 12 strikeouts among 14 outs while Baseball America does a prospect list update.

Aug 10, 2023

Maybe the forgotten prospect when it comes within the Pirates system, Po-Yu Chen is quietly putting together a fairly solid season.

After finishing just shy of 100 innings pitched last year in Bradenton, Chen crossed over that threshold with his latest outing on Wednesday.

He also racked up the strikeouts, early and often, totaling 12 in 4.2 innings pitched. Basically, 12 of the 14 outs he recorded, were by strikeout. Impressive for someone who hasn’t always been known to put up high strikeout numbers.

Adding in his Wednesday start to his season totals, Chen now has 109 strikeouts in 103.2 innings pitched while posting a 3.82 ERA across 20 games - 19 starts.

He becomes the second player in the Pirates system to cross the 100 innings mark - joining Aaron Shortridge, who is playing with the Altoona Curve.

After posting an ERA of over seven in April, he’s posted a sub-four mark in each of the months since.

With the surplus of pitching talent in the system, it’s easy to overlook Chen, but he’s 21-years-old (will turn 22 in October), and has one of the best off-speed pitches in the system (splitter).

Baseball America did their mid-season team Top 30 prospect updates to include the recent 2023 draft picks.

Since the article is under a paywall, I won’t go into too much details, but six total players that are newer to the system found their way onto the list for the Pirates, five from the draft and the other from a trade.

Paul Skenes is the top prospect, who is also set to make his professional debut on Thursday.