Quinn Priester: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Debut

Quinn Priester gets hit hard after strong first time through lineup in major league debut

In an ideal scenario, that start clearly goes better than it did for Quinn Priester. the Pirates first round pick in 2019 got off to fantastic start in his debut, getting eight of the first nine batters he faced to ground out, with the other being a line-out that barely got off the ground.

The second time around the lineup was a completely different story, as Cleveland made adjustments and tuned Priester up to a tune of seven runs on seven hits and two walks across his final 2.1 innings pitched.

So with his first start in the books, lets dig in and take a look at the game in general.

The Good

On paper, the change-up didn’t do too much, as of the 15 times he threw it (according to Baseball Savant), he didn’t have a whiff (on four swings) or any called strikes, but he did pick up a couple of groundouts with it.

He didn’t throw it much in Triple-A this year this year before coming up, but now looking at how he used it the first three innings, and how the rest of the game went - he may need to if he wants to have any success.

It helped the sinker play up a little more in the first couple of innings, and played a part in so many weakly hit balls into the ground.

The breaking pitches played the way you would want, with hitters missing five times on the 15 swings (33%) they took on them. Granted I haven’t seen every pitch Priester threw in Double-A, over my time watching him I didn’t see many sliders against lefties, so that was a good mix to throw into things.

Priester has five pitches to use, the more ways he can mix things up, the more success he can set himself up to have.

The Bad

While Priester was efficient even to the end (he finished with 73 pitches in 5.1 innings), the control did start to vary towards the end of the outing, with him missing away more often.

Control has never really been a big issue for Priester in the minors, although some of his worst outings this season has also been some of his wildest. With stuff that isn’t going to be missing many bats, that puts even more pressure for him to hit his spots on a consistent basis.

The Ugly

Well, the fastball and sinker played about how just about everyone who watched him play consistently said it was going to. In total Priester threw 32 fastballs and sinkers, getting just two whiffs on 18 swings (11.1%), which puts him near Roansy Contreras territory.

It played well in the first three innings, but immediately after he got to the second time through the order things changed. Hitters sat on it, knew they were going to be able make contact and completely capitalized if he didn’t hit his spot.

This was the concern with Priester coming up, and this was pretty much the worst case scenario playing out.

He won’t always get hit this hard, but there was a reason why people started to question just what his upside is.

The change-up looked like it could help offset the sinker at times, but until then, the amount of contact on the fastballs is something to monitor.

Final Analysis

Realistically, it was just one start. Priester has some work to do, and this was part of what I was saying the other day on Youtube, about where there wasn’t much more he can do in the minors.

It was time for him to figure out how to get major league hitters out with what he has to work with.

Now that he’s faced the highest level of hitters, now he can go and adjust to try and push back.