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Prospect Notes: Are Middle Relievers the New Efficiency?

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Through ten games this year, the Pirates’ longest outing by a starter has been a five and a third-inning marathon by Jose Quintana.  Last night’s start by JT Brubaker was the only other game where a starter managed five innings.

It’s worked out sort-of OK, though, because Wil Crowe and Dillon Peters have been lights-out in middle relief.  So far, they’ve worked 16.2 scoreless innings.  There was also a strong outing by Roansy Contreras that earned him his first win.  The Bucs have played a very weak schedule so far, making it premature to declare success of any sort, but it’s encouraging.  Well, the middle relief part is encouraging.  The rotation, not so much.

To my knowledge, the Pirates haven’t specifically said this was a plan.  It’s hard to think otherwise, though.  In spring training, it was pretty obvious the rotation was set in stone going in, and Crowe and Peters were slated for the bullpen.  There’s also the complete lack of effort by the team to upgrade the ‘pen in any other way during the off-season.

Some of this “plan,” if it is one, is no doubt situational.  It has to be spurred in part by the fact that Ben Cherington has assembled a group of starters that can’t get through a lineup twice.  But some of the same patterns are emerging in the farm system.  It’s too soon to draw any conclusions, because strict pitch counts at this stage are the norm.  The Pirates have, however, been using some real pitching prospects in long relief roles.

One example is Nick Garcia, on whom they’re pretty high.  He’s had two strong, long relief outings so far.

One guy I’m curious about is Max Kranick.  He had a really extreme, second-time-through problem last year.  I also noticed he was hitting 97 mph in his first rehab outing.  Maybe he’d be good in a Crowe-type role.

Prospect Notes

**Can it really be a coincidence that Mason Martin and Cal Mitchell are having such big starts to their seasons?  They were the two most prominent prospects left off the 40-man roster last fall, but they’re easily outhitting all the guys who were added.

Is it possible Rob Manfred did the Pirates a big favor when his lockout ultimately forced the cancellation of the Rule 5 draft?  Are we going to owe Manfred for whatever success the Pirates see in the near future?  Could it be he actually gives a tootle about small-market teams?

Nah.

**This year’s Bradenton team presents an interesting contrast, demographic-wise, with last year’s.  The 2021 Marauders rode easily the league’s youngest lineup to a title.  They were a team with a lot of raw talent, but they were, uh, raw.  The inexperience was the product of being made up mostly of prep draftees who skipped the now-defunct short-season levels, and DSL guys who skipped over rookie ball entirely.

The 2022 Marauders aren’t as young.  The weighted average age of their hitters is slightly above the league average.  The age is pushed up especially by two players — Jacob Gonzalez, who’s nearly 24, and Jakob Goldfarb, nearly 26 — whom the Pirates brought in from outside.  They’ve also got several key players repeating the level, and they have a core of college draftees in Wyatt Hendrie, Mike Jarvis, Brenden Dixon and Luke Brown.  The hitters who’ve followed the more “standard” path to full-season ball, going through the Gulf Coast League, are Tsung-Che Cheng, Juan Jerez, Rodolfo Nolasco and Geovanny Planchart.

This lineup isn’t as talented as last year’s, but it’s still good and not as raw.  Bradenton leads the league in just about all offensive categories by large margins, although the Lakeland pitching staff probably had a hand in things.  The balance on this team, though, may lean toward the pitching staff, which apart from Po-Yu Chen has a lot of less recognizable names (unless, of course, you’re a P2 subscriber).  Luis Peralta, Carlos Jimenez, Valentin Linarez, Cristian Charle, Joelvis Del Rosario, Dante Mendoza and Xavier Concepcion, among others, are worth following.

Wilbur Miller
Wilbur Miller
Having followed the Pirates fanatically since 1965, Wilbur Miller is one of the fast-dwindling number of fans who’ve actually seen good Pirate teams. He’s even seen Hall-of-Fame Pirates who didn’t get traded mid-career, if you can imagine such a thing. His first in-person game was a 5-4, 11-inning win at Forbes Field over Milwaukee (no, not that one). He’s been writing about the Pirates at various locations online for over 20 years. It has its frustrations, but it’s certainly more cathartic than writing legal stuff. Wilbur is retired and now lives in Bradenton with his wife and three temperamental cats.

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