The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of Pittsburgh Pirates on their quality curveballs; Chris Stratton is one of the club’s back-end relievers, and prospect Mike Burrows is rated by Baseball America as having the best breaker in the system.

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Michael Burrows, Pittsburgh Pirates

“My dad said I couldn’t even try to throw a curveball until I had hair under my armpits; that was the saying for him. But yeah, I really started as soon as I could, maybe at 13 or 14, and then just developed feel for it. As I got older — as I continued to progress — I had to change the shape of it, because as hitters got better I couldn’t have a curveball that was popping out. So it’s really been an evolution of a curveball that was in the low-to-mid 70s and has creeped up into the low 80s. It’s sharper now.

“I would say it [improved the most] over COVID, and then as I got into the 2021 season. That spring training, I really started working on building intent and throwing it harder. Metrically, when you look at a curveball that’s over 80 mph, it’s significantly harder to hit — hitters’ numbers go down — and I think that was the biggest turning point for me. Throwing it harder, there’s not a huge decrease in break, but a better shape to where it tunnels my fastball better.

“[Prior to 2020], I didn’t have Rapsodo, TrackMan, or anything like that. Right before COVID hit, about a month until that spring training, I went out and got a Rapsodo. I started diving into the metrics of pitches — why some are better than others, what spin direction was going to do for me. That’s when I really started developing my curveball. I was also throwing with a guy from the Dodgers, Nolan Long — he’s since signed with Athletics — and they have endless amounts of information over there. Another thing I did was take the Rapsodo course, so I could better understand all of the numbers.

“In terms of adjustments, it wasn’t really mechanics; it was more so thinking about that last five percent, rather than the entire motion. It’s about keeping my body under control, and then in that explosion, when I’m really throwing the baseball, is when the effort happens. It’s like a karate-chop motion, where your hand is staying neutral through the throw. It’s that last bit, where the hand is coming through and it rolls over top.

“The curveball was always there for me. It’s not like it had bad spin or anything like that. Everything was there. All I needed was to find a better shape that was going to tunnel my fastball. I still want that 12–6; I still want that vertical break to it. Again, I want to be able to tunnel it, not have it pop out.” Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Gammons didn’t invent the Sunday notes column, but few would dispute that he perfected it. The 77-year-old sportswriter-turned-TV-analyst did so at The Boston Globe, where he began a career that has seen him become the world’s most-influential baseball columnist. To say that Gammons has been an influence on the column you are currently reading would be an understatement.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Gammons for years, yet had never asked him about the genesis of his own Sunday column. Chatting with him at Fenway Park earlier this week, I decided to change that.

“I loved the notion of the notes column, and how Dick Young used it,” Gammons said of the late New York-based sportswriter. “I always thought there should be one for every sport. Bob Ryan and I talked about it when we were both interns, in 1968. I’ve always loved the minor leagues, and in 1970 — 1969 was my first full year with the Globe —I asked, ‘Can I write a notes column on the minor leagues?’ The Globe people said fine. This was for the Sunday paper.”

Gammons recalled writing about Bob Montgomery, who came up through the Boston system before catching for them for 10 big-league seasons. (Later a TV analyst on Red Sox games, Montgomery has the distinction of being the last player for any team to come to the plate without a batting helmet.)

In typical Gammons fashion, the other player he mentioned having covered in his nascent notes days was equal parts obscure and interesting. Calling him “a minor league legend as a hitter,” and citing his .300 big-league batting average, Gammons name-checked Chris Coletta. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Loftin could get away with covering the entire plate against high school and college hurlers. That’s far harder to do in pro ball, which is why the 23-year-old Kansas City Royals prospect — per the tutelage of the organization’s hitting instructors — is now dialing in on pitches that can he do more damage on. The message he’s been receiving is pretty straightforward: Look for something in a certain zone, and when you get it, don’t miss it.

The dictum is simple; the execution is anything but. Not when you’re facing pitchers who are throwing high-90s heaters and breaking balls that are cutting and diving in either direction.

“It’s easier said than done,” admitted Loftin, whom the Royals drafted 32nd overall in 2020 out of Baylor University. “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do — besides hitting a golf ball. That’s really hard to do, as well.”

Wait. A golf ball isn’t moving unpredictably at great speed. Rather, it’s just sitting there, motionless, ready to be struck at the swinger’s leisure. For someone with the athleticism to play shortstop and centerfield in professional baseball, squaring up an immobile object should be as easy as pie.

Not necessarily. Read the rest of this entry »

Judging by their 69-win projection and negligible odds of winning the World Series, the Pirates don’t have a great deal to look forward to from a competitive standpoint in 2022. But Opening Day is a time for celebration and optimism nonetheless, and early on Thursday afternoon, FanSided’s Robert Murray reported that the team had agreed to an eight-year, $70-million extension with third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, the largest contract in Pirates history.

The contract for the 25-year-old Hayes is also a record for a player with between one and two years of service time. It covers his final two pre-arbitration years, his three years of arbitration-eligibility, and the first three years of his free agent eligibility, through his age-32 season. The exact details have not been reported at this writing, including the value of his club option for the ninth year (2030).

The celebration was almost immediately dampened when Hayes left the Pirates’ opener against the Cardinals in the bottom of the first inning due to an apparent injury to his left wrist. He dove trying to catch a bloop into left field by Dylan Carlson, but the ball fell and turned into a double. After Tyler O’Neill singled Carlson home two batters later, Pirates head athletic trainer Rafael Freitas and manager Derek Shelton came out of the dugout to check on Hayes, unwrapping his left wrist and taking him out of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto Blue Jays pitching prospect Hagen Danner is a converted catcher who gets good ride on his four-seam fastball, and he attributes that quality to his former position. Hearing that from the 23-year-old right-hander prompted me to ask Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi if what I was told made sense.

“I can definitely see that,” said Girardi, who caught for 15 big-league seasons. “But I don’t think it’s a guarantee; some [catchers] have a little tail to their ball when they throw. At times, I would have a little tail. But [Garrett] Stubbs really gets underneath it, really gets that spin. There are a lot of catchers who do. It’s how we’re taught to throw.”

Good ride typically comes with a four-seam grip, but unlike pitchers, a catcher isn’t standing on a mound with ample time to manipulate the baseball in his hand; he has to receive the ball, make the transfer, and get rid of it as quickly as possible. I asked the catcher-turned-manager about that as well.

“You don’t have time to get the grip, but ideally you want to throw it straight,” said Girardi. “And you can still throw it straight, pretty much, if you don’t have a perfect four-seam grip.”

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch is likewise a former catcher, so I asked him the same questions I’d asked Girardi. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, the Pirates finally got in on the post-lockout frenzy, signing a pair of lower-cost free agents who both have interesting bits of upside. First baseman and designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach signed a one-year, $1 million deal that comes with the possibility for $400,000 more in performance incentives and a $1.5 million option for 2023. In the bullpen, the Pirates inked Heath Hembree to a one-year, $2.125 million deal. These might not be big-money moves, and Pittsburgh’s payroll still sits at a shockingly low $44 million, but it’s worth taking a closer look at Vogelbach and Hembree to see what inspired the team to finally open its wallet. We’ll start with Vogelbach.

After a few fits and starts, Vogelbach burst onto the scene in 2019 for the Mariners, slugging prolific home runs on his way to a 30 homer season and a 112 wRC+. Late in the season, though, he fell on hard times that carried over into 2020. The Mariners decided they’d seen enough and shipped him to the Blue Jays, who themselves cut him after just five plate appearances; Milwaukee became his third uniform of 2020. He ended the season strongly enough to be brought back in a platoon role in 2021, putting up near league average offensive numbers (101 wRC+ in 258 PA), while also losing two months in the middle of the season to a pretty bad hamstring injury. The Brewers chose to non-tender him this offseason.

Given his distinctive physique (6-foot-0, 270 pounds) and success in high-leverage spots (137 wRC+), he’s become something of a fan favorite everywhere he’s been. Take this walk-off grand slam he hit last September:

Vogelbach possesses a lot of the skills that modern front offices like, namely, a patient approach and great bat-to-ball skills. Calling him patient is underselling it a bit, as only Yasmani Grandal swung less often than Vogelbach last year (32.9% swing rate). He’s perfectly comfortable falling behind in the count and hunting for a mistake up in the zone. As you can imagine, this approach leads to plenty of walks and strikeouts but Vogelbach actually has the bat-to-ball skills to maintain a roughly league average strikeout rate. Take a closer look at how his plate discipline stacks up to both league average and Juan Soto – the gold standard of plate discipline:

It’s a very impressive skill set and that’s before you even get to the part where he hits the ball quite hard. Vogelbach had an 88th percentile exit velocity last year and his HardHit% was good for the 89th percentile. Interestingly, though, having those skills has only led to a 103 wRC+ and 1.2 career WAR in 1,098 plate appearances, and that’s because there are some pretty big holes in his game.

Vogelbach has really struggled against lefties, with a 46 wRC+ for his career (versus 117 against righties); last season, he put up a wRC+ of one against southpaws, albeit in just 34 plate appearances. His performance against lefties has prevented him from securing everyday playing time, and it can be hard to dig your way out of a platoon role once you stop getting regular exposure. Another big weakness has been Vogelbach’s production against breaking balls: He has a .196 wOBA on curveballs and sliders in his career compared to a robust .374 wOBA against fastballs. Interestingly, he actually sees a league average number of fastballs; I think his extreme patience has allowed him to force pitchers to come into the zone more than what their game plan may suggest. Finally, Vogelbach has proven to be a poor defender at first base, putting up -15 Defensive Runs Saved in a little less than a full season’s worth of opportunities.

Vogelbach’s lack of defensive skill is the easiest problem for the Pirates to mitigate. The Pirates’ current first baseman, Yoshi Tsutsugo, has shown a better feel for the position (-1 DRS / +1 OAA), albeit in an even smaller sample than Vogelbach. Tsutsugo also doesn’t have notable platoon splits, so all signs seem to point to him starting nearly every day at first while Vogelbach has the inside track on the DH role. Perhaps the Pirates will even give him some run against lefties to see if there is any improvement to be had with his splits, but it’s likely that he’ll be ceding at-bats to someone like a Michael Chavis. The good news for Vogelbach and the Pirates is that the NL Central lacks standout left-handed starters, with only Wade Miley, Eric Lauer, and Steven Matz looking like locks for a rotation spot in the division.

On to the bullpen, and the signing of Heath Hembree. The 33-year-old right-hander spent parts of seven seasons with Boston as a reliable workhorse reliever who never quite ascended to being a go-to high-leverage option. He started bouncing around in 2020; the Pirates will be his fifth big league team, after stints with the Phillies, Mets and Reds in the last couple of years. That bouncing around is due to a stark drop in performance from his early days in Boston, as he put up the two worst run prevention seasons of his career with a 9.00 ERA in 2020 and a 5.59 ERA in ’21. Looking forward, though, there’s some reason to believe he has more left in the tank than his last two years might suggest.

The most eye-popping change for Hembree last season was the increased zip on his fastball, which gained more than a tick from the previous year. Thanks to his 92nd percentile spin rate, his fastball drops very little and he also gets above average run, helping to turn it into a popup machine (37.0% popup rate). It’s worth noting that he was dealing with a recurring elbow issue in 2019 and ’20 that required three separate IL stints, so good health could be enough to explain the velocity increase.

To go along with more velocity, Hembree pretty drastically altered his breaking ball in 2021 and the results were promising. Where once his arsenal contained a distinct slider and curveball, he now throws one breaking ball, and while it’s officially logged as a slider, it’s quite different from the version he used to throw. Velocity-wise it comes in around 86 mph, nearly in the middle of his old slider (89 mph) and his old curveball (81 mph), though calling it a slurve doesn’t feel quite right as its movement is very horizontal. This new breaker allowed only a .283 wOBA and he started working it in quite a bit, even lowering his fastball usage to accommodate throwing it more.

That new slider doesn’t keep the ball on the ground and neither does his high-spin fastball, so cavernous PNC Park will be a welcome site for Hembree and his 53.7% fly ball rate. Hembree brings plenty of experience to a young and largely underwhelming Pittsburgh bullpen that finished 26th in ERA- and 24th in K-BB% last season. David Bednar and his 2.23 ERA is the standout performer in the ‘pen; Hembree will likely be getting plenty of high-leverage innings setting him up this season, alongside workhorse reliever Chris Stratton. This move gives the Pirates a pretty talented top three in their bullpen, especially if Hembree can carry forward some of those interesting developments from last season.

Danny Coulombe features a lot of breaking balls, and he does so with scant fanfare. In 28 relief appearances and one outing as an opener, the 32-year-old Minnesota Twins southpaw threw 41.8% sliders and 24.8% curveballs last year. He was also quietly effective. Taking the mound for a team that performed well below expectations, Coulombe logged a 3.67 ERA and a 3.75 FIP while fanning 33 batters and issuing just seven free passes in 34-and-a-third innings.

Emblematic of the lefty’s lack of fanfare is that I talked to him last August, and while I did include a few of his quotes in a September column — these on an online project management class that had him regularly visiting FanGraphs — I am just now sharing the crux of our conversation. What we delved into was the evolution of his breaker-heavy repertoire.

“I was predominantly four-seam/curveball when I got drafted,” said Coulombe, whom the Los Angeles Dodgers took in the 25th round out of Texas Tech University in 2012. “Coming up through the system I was mostly a curveball guy, and in 2014, a pitching coach I had, Scott Radinsky, told me that I needed something that looks like a fastball and moves. He said, ‘Right now, if a hitter sees a pop he knows it’s a breaking ball, and if he sees it straight he knows it’s a fastball.’ So we worked on developing a slider that year. I’ve always been able to spin a baseball, and now I’m probably about 70% breaking balls, curveballs and sliders.”

For Coulombe, maintaining a consistent differential between the two is a matter of mindset and grip. The latter required an adjustment, which was necessitated by unwanted blending. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 964

This week on the show, David Laurila welcomes long-time Pittsburgh scribe and former Baseball Prospectus colleague John Perrotto to the program.

Perrotto has been covering baseball long enough to remember the last labor stoppage, and he shares his perspective on the current lockout and how it compares to 1994. After that, we get anecdotes about a number of Pirates legends, including what it was like to get to know Jim Leyland, and that one time Brian Giles took batting practice in his birthday suit. We also hear about Perrotto’s clubhouse relationship with Barry Bonds, how impressive of an interview he could be when he wanted to be, and what it took to earn the slugger’s respect.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 43 minute play time.)

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Nick Gonzales hasn’t changed much as a hitter since he was selected seventh overall out of New Mexico State University by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2020 draft. That’s good news for a rebuilding Bucs club badly in need of some offensive oomph. The 22-year-old infielder logged a .399/.502/.747 slash line as a collegian, and while his numbers weren’t nearly as gaudy in his first professional season, he nonetheless continued to square up baseballs. Playing for the High-A Greensboro Grasshoppers, Gonzales slashed .303/.385/.565 with 18 home runs in 369 plate appearances, and he followed that up with a 1.032 OPS in the Arizona Fall League.

Again, not much has changed.

“I’m mostly the same guy [mechanically],” Gonzales said prior to playing in last November’s Fall Stars Game. “I think my leg started lifting a little higher during the COVID summer, and it was kind of that way earlier in the season, but now it’s probably back to where it was during college. At least it’s pretty similar.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »