Pirates' 2024 Minor League Recaps: Greensboro Part 2, Pitchers
A lot of changeover with a lot of good results
The Greensboro pitching staff had a lot of coming and going, mainly in the form of promotions, so there were a lot of roughly “half-seasons.” Enough pitchers came through, though, both before leaving and after arriving, that the Hoppers got good pitching overall. In a hitter’s park, they finished fifth in the 12-team South Atlantic League in ERA and fourth in WHIP. They had the third-lowest walk rate and were slightly below average in K rate. Despite their homer-prone home park, they tied for just the fifth-most longballs allowed.
Two of the “goings” were two of the team’s best pitchers: Patrick Reilly and Luis Peralta. Both got traded, so they can get discussed in recaps of their new organizations.
Starters
Despite the changes that took place, the Hoppers had six pitchers — not counting Reilly — who accounted for the largest shares of the team’s innings, mostly as starters but in a couple of cases in swing roles. All six threw between 62 and 106.1 innings with Greensboro.
The most successful was lefty Hunter Barco, who’s moved into the upper reaches of most Pirate prospect lists. After missing 2022 — the year he was drafted in the second round — due to Tommy John surgery and throwing just 18.1 rehab innings in 2023, Barco took a regular turn with the Hoppers, although the Pirates were cautious with his innings. The numbers were good: 3.34 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 3.2 BB/9, 11.2 K/9. It got Barco a late July promotion to Altoona, although he threw only four innings there, missing the final six weeks with a minor knee injury. Including the Altoona time, Barco had a big home/road split. Opponents had a .719 OPS against him at home and .473 on the road, so you wonder whether the Greensboro ballpark hurt his numbers.
Of the three other most frequent starters, Wilber Dotel got the most action, leading the team in innings and easily with 25 starts. Dotel is a rare Latin American pitching prospect for the Pirates. (If you guessed correctly that he signed before Ben Cherington became GM . . . well, you win nothing because it’s too easy.) Dotel has started popping up on prospect lists despite weak numbers: 5.33 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, 4.6 BB/9. He had big gopher ball problems, allowing 21, second most in the league, and one every five innings. (He gave up 12 at home and nine on the road, so the Greensboro ballpark wasn’t the entire reason). The problem was a reversal of Dotel’s 2023 season at Bradenton when he allowed very few extra-base hits and just three home runs. In 2024, he’d often dominate for several innings, only to give up a couple of long balls. The attraction in Dotel’s case is a fastball that’s often in the upper 90s and has reportedly reached triple digits. His secondary stuff needs work, which is probably why he had a K/9 of 9.0, below the league average of 9.6.
The next two most frequent starters (apart from Reilly) were Derek Diamond and J.P. Massey. A 2022 6th-rounder and a finesse righty, Diamond showed good control but was too hittable, allowing opponents a .781 OPS, nearly 100 points above league average. Longballs were a problem for him, too, with a total of 16 in 95.2 innings, although only four were hit on the road. Massey, taken a round after Diamond, had the opposite problem: pretty good stuff but weak control, leading to 5.1 walks per nine innings. He finished with a 5.24 ERA and 1.50 WHIP.
The staff’s two swingmen were Dominic Perachi and Alessandro Ercolani. Perachi, a lefty, was drafted in the 11th round in 2022 out of Salve Regina University. He relies heavily on a slow curve and SAL hitters didn’t seem to be able to do anything with it. He had a 2.08 ERA, a minuscule 0.86 WHIP, a 2.3 BB/9 and a 9.9 K/9. Amazingly, Perachi didn’t allow a single home run in 73.2 IP for Greensboro. Unfortunately, after moving up to Altoona at the beginning of August, he pitched as poorly in AA as he did well for the Hoppers.
Ercolani’s background is especially unusual, as he hails from San Marino, one of the world’s smallest nations. The Pirates seemed to be handling him cautiously — he had some injury issues last year — as they kept most of his outings, whether as a starter or reliever, to 3-4 innings. Ercolani had one very bad month, with a 10.20 ERA in May, but he was very good otherwise. That included a 1.25 ERA from the beginning of July on, with eight walks and 44 strikeouts over 38 innings. Ercolani had some control issues in 2023 and then walked 11 in just 3.1 IP in a rough and abbreviated trip to the Arizona Fall League, so this year’s 2.9 BB/9, coupled with a 10.9 K/9, was good to see. And he won’t turn 21 until next April.
Some late-season reinforcements from Bradenton made very good additions to the rotation. Carlson Reed was dominant over six starts for the Hoppers. He posted an 0.87 ERA and allowed an absurd total of 11 hits over 31 innings, with 34 strikeouts. Lefty Michael Kennedy made just two starts at the end of the year, but he fanned 15 and allowed just one run in 10.2 IP.
The most surprising performance after a promotion came from Garrett McMillan. A reliever who had a solid season at Bradenton, McMillan made three starts and four relief appearances for the Hoppers and had a 0.43 ERA. He also fanned 28 in 21 innings. It’ll be interesting to see where McMillan opens in 2025 and in what role.
Relievers
Several Hopper relievers pitched well enough to move up to Altoona in time for some meaningful action there. Their performance after the promotion, though, mostly wasn’t so good.
This included two lefties, Jaden Woods and Cy Nielson. Woods, a 2023 seventh-rounder, had a 2.13 ERA, 3.9 BB/9, and 11.0 K/9 in 20 games before moving up in mid-June. More later about how things went after that. Woods had a fairly big platoon split overall. Nielson, a 2022 eighth-rounder, had very similar numbers: 2.39 ERA, 3.6 BB/9 and 11.9 K/9. He moved up in late July. Nielson had a significant reverse platoon split, which is surprising because his out pitch when he was drafted was supposedly his slider.
One righty, Emmanuel Chapman (no relation), moved up after just a dozen games with the Hoppers. The Pirates signed Chapman out of Cuba, where, despite good velocity, he had a very poor record in international competition. He’s also 26 now and hasn’t gotten any notice from the prospect hounds, so it’s hard to see where he fits. He had good numbers for Greensboro: 12 hits and six walks, with 23 strikeouts, in 18 innings.
Another righty, Valentin Linarez, went in the opposite direction. He signed out of the Dominican way back in 2018 and is eligible for free agency after this season. Linarez has a mid-90s fastball, but he struggled as a starter, and the Pirates moved him to the bullpen last year. He opened this year at Altoona and had a bad time there, so he got demoted to Greensboro in late June. He put up a huge 15.6 K/9 and had a 3.20 ERA, but it may have been too little too late.
The Hoppers had several relievers who offer some possibly standout skills, but who had difficulties of one sort or another.
Lefty Julian Bosnic missed two months out of the middle of the season but still got into 24 games. He features a lot of movement that gets swings and misses, but missing the strike zone is also a problem. He had a 3.03 ERA, but 28 walks in 38.2 IP left him with a 1.66 WHIP and 4.15 FIP.
Australian Brandan Bidois puzzles scouts with stuff that misses a lot more bats than the tracking data seems to support. This year, Bidois fanned a whopping 13 per nine innings. His 4.15 ERA didn’t match his very good 1.21 WHIP, either, and he only allowed three gopher balls. His FIP was 3.79, so he may just have had some bad luck. Bidois has been plagued by injuries so far and missed the second half of 2024.
Ryan Harbin isn’t a puzzle. He throws in the upper-90s and had nearly the same K/9 as Bidois, in his case 12.9. He struggles with his control, though, walking 5.6 per nine, and he gets hit more than he should when he gets behind. That left him with a 1.51 WHIP and 5.40 ERA. Harbin was hurt at the start of the season and didn’t join the Hoppers until late May.
Several other relievers served as mainstays for the Hoppers for parts of the season but didn’t have a lot of success. Darvin Garcia missed about a month but got into 32 games and struggled to throw strikes. He had a 1.57 WHIP and 4.50 ERA. Elijah Birdsong, an 18th-round pick in 2022, also missed about a month, also struggled to throw strikes, and had a 4.83 ERA. Jaycob Deese, selected a round before Birdsong, took a regular turn for the Hoppers and also filled in a couple times for Altoona. He wasn’t effective at all, with a 6.63 ERA for Greensboro and gopher ball problems.
The Greensboro bullpen got a lot of late-season reinforcements from Bradenton. Most didn’t do terribly well, including lefties Magdiel Cotto and Yoldin De La Paz, and righty Landon Tomkins. The sample sizes at Greensboro for Cotto and Tomkins were very small. Carlos Jimenez arrived in time to throw 4.2 IP for the Hoppers at the end of the season and did reasonably well.
One final pitcher to mention is Scott Randall, who arrived in a trade with Arizona for Diego Castillo. He was returning from Tommy John surgery and threw 38.1 innings for Greensboro after rehabbing lower down.
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Not much wheat among that chaff.
I saw Chapman at Toon-Town on several occasions. He's very good.