Pirates prospects pitching metrics that stood out in 2023

A look at some pitching metrics throughout the Pirates organization

Photo Credit: WTM

The other day, we talked about some hitting metrics that stood out from Pirates prospects in 2023, with the only caveat being from Bradenton and Indianapolis, as the middle two levels weren’t publicly available.

Again, these numbers are courtesy of Prospects Live, so make sure to go over and give them a look.

Here’s a look at three pitching metrics that stood out among the data we got in 2023.

Leading whiff rates by pitch

I grouped each pitch to see who had the best whiff rates among four-seam, slider, curveball, change-up, sinker, and cutter. Only Carmen Mldozinski and Paul Skenes were tracked with a sweeper, so I didn’t include that specific pitch.

To qualify, you had to have thrown at least 50 pitches that were tracked.

Four-Seam: Patrick Reilly, 41.7% whiff rate.

I’ve talked about Reilly before, and it’s no surprise he has among the best whiff rates with the fastball in the system. Antwone Kelly threw 30 four-seam fastballs and picked up a whiff rate of 60%.

Slider: Ryan Harbin, 59% whiff rate

If I drop the required pitches to 20, Mike Walsh will finish with a perfect 100% miss rate, with Brandan Bidois at 66.7%.

Harbin had a fantastic start to the season in Bradenton but struggled to make the jump up to Greensboro. However, I saw him in person at the end of the year, and he struck out the side, two by slider.

Curveball: Luis Peralta, 60% whiff rate

Peralta’s more well-known pitch is his fastball, but his curveball did plenty of damage. Another example of the plethora of minor leaguers with above-average stuff but 20-grade control, Peralta, is one of the system's better ‘what-if’ prospects.

Change up: Owen Kellington, 47.5% whiff rate

Watching Kellington's season in Bradenton during the 2023 was a wild ride. After the first month or so, his curveball outperformed some of the system's better pitches.

By the end of it, the change-up looked like one of the more dominating offerings in the system, with a near 50% whiff rate on 153 tracked pitches. Carlos Jimenez didn’t pitch much, only had 22 tracked off-speed pitches, and had a 75% whiff rate with them.

Sinker: Julian Bosnic, 32% whiff rate

Bosnic falls victim to the cut-off in available data. He was among the minor league leaders regarding whiff rate with the four-seam among players who threw 400 or more. Unfortunately, he finished second to Reilly on here due to only having Bradenton available.

As a consolation, he still got the top nod regarding the sinker, with a 32% miss rate. Worth noting, Michael Kennedy threw 43 sinkers, just missing the cut-off, and ended up with a whiff rate of 40%.

Alessandro Ercolani’s intriguing fastball

The last impression of Ercolani we had for the 2023 season was his disastrous Arizona Fall League stint, where he walked 11 batters in 3.2 innings before being shut down.

Walks were a bit of an issue with him in Bradenton during the regular season(11.3%), but not to the extent we saw in the AFL.

At least with the fastball, Ercolani did a good job throwing strikes, his 47.5% in-zone rate with the four-seam was the third highest tracked mark among pitchers with at least 100 thrown. Only Carmen Mlodzinski and Quinn Priester had a higher rate than him.

He induced a ground ball rate of over 50%, and posted solid underlying metrics with the pitch (16.8 IVB, -4.7 VAA).