Roansy Contreras exceeded his prospect status in his most recent start, surpassing 50 career innings in the majors.
Contreras has a combined 3.57 ERA in 53 innings in his young career, with 54 strikeouts, 23 walks, and nine homers allowed. He’s currently in his age-22 season, showing off a fastball that averages 96, and two plus breaking pitches. Coming into the season as the top pitching prospect in the system, Contreras has shown the potential to lead the Pirates’ rotation in the future.
When a prospect loses eligibility, we run a Roundtable feature, looking at their career outlook from this point forward. Today, we look at The Book on Roansy Contreras.
JOHN DREKER
Contreras has been as strong as you can hope for this season, even if his year got off to a strange start. The Pirates planned on slowly building up his innings to control his overall innings due to his age and significant time missed last year. He was originally called up to the majors in a relief role and handled the change of plans well. He then went to the minors to get stretched out in the familiar starting role and quickly worked his way back to Pittsburgh. With the exception of his one poor start, he’s been better than I thought we would see this year in the majors. While I don’t expect him to see a lot of work (maybe 50 innings total?) during the second half of the season due to his last year’s low totals, I don’t think he really needs to show anything special to be considered the top starter for the Pirates going into 2023. At that point, he should be able to work a full season without any inning restraints.
Contreras has the pitch mix, velocity, control, and demeanor on the mound to be the ace of this pitching staff. I wouldn’t label him as a #1 starter/ace in overall MLB terms, but I also wouldn’t rule it out in the future because of his age and current status, as well as him being better than I thought he would be this year. He has reached what I thought was his ceiling already, something very few prospects do, so who is to say there isn’t more? If he was still prospect eligible, he would be right there with Henry Davis vying for the top spot in my mind. I think Contreras is going to be special going forward and he’s someone who they could lock up long-term before he reaches arbitration.
WILBUR MILLER
The book on Contreras is pretty straightforward; he has the highest ceiling of any pitcher in the organization and he’s taken significant strides toward showing he can make things work at the major league level. Whether through great scouting or luck, the Pirates acquired Contreras just as his stuff took a big step forward. His velocity went from 92-95 mph to 96-97, and his slider became an elite pitch. He also throws a curve that’s not quite on a level with the slider. He occasionally throws a change, but so far it’s not a reliable pitch. Under the former front office, that probably would have become a lingering problem, as they absolutely insisted that starters throw a change. This regime doesn’t seem to have the same obsession, so Contreras may go forward mainly with the other three pitches. So far in the majors, he’s had a large reverse platoon split, albeit in a small sample size, so there’s no reason just yet to think he’ll have to have the change to pitch to left-handed hitters. In the last two years, Contreras has had very high K rates, which isn’t surprising. His fastball velocity and spin rates are close to 90th percentile, and his vertical movement is above average.
The big issue going forward will be health/stamina. Contreras threw 132 innings in 2019, but the Yankees didn’t even bring him to their alternate facility in 2020 and he threw only 61 innings in 2021, thanks to some forearm soreness. So far this year he’s thrown 70 and the Pirates appear to be restricting his workload (and/or service time). He hasn’t gone beyond six innings in the majors so far, but that’s not exactly unusual these days. If things go as hoped, Contreras could take his place at the top of the Pirates’ rotation in 2023.
ANTHONY MURPHY
I’ve always felt weird about projecting pitchers. I feel like the term ‘Ace’ is the most misused term in baseball. You must be able to string multiple years of dominant player to get that label, which is why I will rarely use that when projecting a pitcher.
Looking at Roansy is so fascinating. The fastball is so electric, he throws both a slider and curveball, both have the potential to be at the very least above average.
What is going to be the difference on just how close Contreras comes to his upside will be how well he learns to control the secondary stuff. The struggles he has had in the majors so far is the ability to throw the breaking balls for strikes enough to entice hitters to swing at them.
Right now, there are times when hitters can sit on the fastball, knowing it’s going to be the only pitch that’s going to be in the strike zone. If he can throw his secondary offerings for strikes, we’ve seen just how good he can be.
That being said, Contreras is an electric pitcher who has shown the poise to get out of his own jam, and has the strikeout ability to get out of a situation where the ball can’t be put in play — maybe more than any of the other starters right now.
I’m not sure Contreras ever reaches ‘Ace’ status, which is okay. There are way less out there than you would think. He can still be a good starting pitcher, but most of that will come from his ability to throw all his pitches for strikes.
If he does improve, and show a little better changeup, he can almost as good as you can be without hitting that elite tier status. If he can’t, he won’t be able to go deep enough in games to be anything more than a middle of a rotation pitcher.
TIM WILLIAMS
Contreras has seen early success in the majors from his two breaking pitches. The slider has a .540 OPS against, and the curveball has a .599 OPS against. The slider is a strikeout pitch, with a 22.6% whiff rate this year. The curveball generates weaker contact, though he doesn’t get hitters to chase on the pitch as often when it’s thrown out of the zone. Contreras has a fastball that averages 96 and can hit 98. That pitch has opposite movement from the curveball, and has been hit a lot this year. The fastball has a .943 OPS against, and is the biggest source of the home run issues this year. Despite not dominating with all of his stuff, Contreras has the mentality on the mound needed to maximize his stuff.
Contreras projects to be the best pitcher out of the Pirates’ system, though he’s going to need some work before he can lead a contending rotation. Looking just at his pitch splits, it seems he would benefit from a sinker. The pitch would complement his slider, while giving a different look from the four seam fastball, which isn’t fooling anyone. I’d have to think that such a move would come after Contreras gets adjusted to the majors, and adjusted to pitching more innings. At the moment, he has 70 innings, which is about ten more than his 2021 totals. His career high was 132 innings in 2019. This year is mostly about getting Contreras adjusted to the majors, and the results have been positive. I don’t think Contreras needs much to go from this current level to a young leader of a contending Pirates rotation.
