BRADENTON, Fla. – The 2017 Bristol Pirates will begin their season tonight, and the roster will be led by two promising pitching prospects in Braeden Ogle and Max Kranick. Both players were selected in the 2016 draft, showing a lot of early promise, with signs of more to come. The Pirates drafted two additional prep pitchers in the 2016 draft, and those two have been on a bit of a different path lately.
Travis MacGregor was drafted in the second round, and Austin Shields was taken in the 33rd round, signing only after competitive balance pick Nick Lodolo decided to go to TCU. MacGregor and Shields were both raw in comparison to Ogle and Kranick, with some obvious things to work on.
MacGregor was taken high, but had a lean, lanky frame with a lot of moving parts to his delivery, and some command problems with his pitches. Shields was fairly new to pitching, and dealing with early struggles as he learned to repeat his delivery. Early during Extended Spring Training, things were looking bad for MacGregor and good for Shields.
MacGregor was showing horrible control, much worse than what he had last year, to the point where it was getting difficult for him to throw strikes. Shields was showing much better control, making some minor changes to his delivery to make it easier to repeat.
But now, with the Bristol season beginning, MacGregor has found a way to turn things around, while Shields has gone back to having poor control, which has actually led to the Pirates leaving him back in the GCL for the start of the year. Let’s break down what happened with both players.
MacGregor Changes His Mechanics
MacGregor got off to that rough start early in extended Spring Training, then the Pirates sat him down for two weeks while he worked on some adjustments to his mechanics.
“They had just changed some stuff on me, some mechanics and delivery-wise,” MacGregor said. “They said it was unfair for me to be trying to get results while working on that stuff, so they took me out for a little while.”
The changes were focused on getting a continuous motion with his arm swing, and getting his glove up out in front of the target. The focus here was not only to improve the command, but to avoid future injuries. He returned on May 29th and threw four innings, showing much better results. He walked one batter in four innings, throwing 10 of 15 first pitch strikes, and 36 of his 60 pitches for strikes.
“It was solid. It felt good out there. The results were there as well,” MacGregor said on that day, following the start.
The mechanics are still going to be an active focus for him, as they’re still new. The Pirates want him focusing on the new adjustments, and just ignoring the results on the mound.
“It’s definitely something I still have to focus on,” MacGregor said. “Continuously just thinking about it while I’m out there. Trying to work on it. … Now they’ve told me they want me to focus on it in the games right now. They’re not really focused on results.”
The results so far have been good enough for MacGregor to go to Bristol. The progress will be hard to judge, as he’s working on new mechanics. The best thing to watch will be his walk total, as that will give some indication of how things are going for him with the new changes.
Shields Takes a Step Back
Things looked promising for Austin Shields when I saw him in Spring Training and in extended Spring Training. I was expecting to see the same control problems he had last year, but he was around the plate a lot more, and throwing more strikes. When I talked to Shields, he mentioned that he was going through some changes with his mechanics as well, and getting more comfortable with his delivery.
“I feel like it’s been getting a lot better,” Shields said at the end of May. “It’s been a lot better recently just with my command and getting more fluent with my mechanics. … Just getting more repetitive with my mechanics and being able to go through it more confidently.”
The Pirates didn’t make any major changes here. The focus was trying to stay back more, and avoiding dropping his arm early and keeping his hands back and his hips in line. Shields was mostly focusing on the fastball command, not getting much of a chance to improve his secondary stuff.
“It’s mostly been fastball command, because I feel like the other pitches will follow,” Shields said. “My slider is usually pretty good when I throw it, and my changeup is getting better as well. So I feel like it’s mainly trying to get my fastball command up.”
Shields was shut down at the end of May after feeling tightness in his forearm and triceps. He had felt that before, but didn’t need to take time off until the most recent issue. That’s not totally uncommon for a young pitcher out of high school. Most prep pitchers are used to throwing from February-May, and only once a week. As they adjust to pitching over a full season, and on a more regular schedule, there will be some soreness where the team takes precaution and sits them down. The same thing has happened to pretty much every prep pitcher the Pirates have drafted over the last few years, Mitch Keller included.
In this case, Shields returned from the time off and his control reverted back to where it was before, to the point where the Pirates made the decision to keep him back in the GCL. It’s hard to say whether this was related to the soreness and the time off, but that will be something to watch early in the season. If he can get back on track with his control, then it’s possible he could make it back up to Bristol with the rest of the 2016 prep pitchers.
