Robert Stephenson is a red flag for me.
The Pittsburgh Pirates added Stephenson off waivers at the end of August 2022. The right-hander leaned on his slider more often at the end of that season, generating strong enough results for the Pirates to bring him back. That same slider in April 2023 wasn’t as effective, going up against early-season minds and the best lineups from each team at the outset. Under the Pirates, Stephenson eventually threw his fastball more often, countering the slider issues with a worse pitch. He was eventually traded to the Rays for Alika Williams.
Adam Berry of MLB.com reported that a few weeks into joining the Rays, Stephenson had a conversation with Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder. That single conversation was enough to get Stephenson to change his slider into a cutter. That cutter went on to be one of the best pitches in baseball, launching Stephenson into being one of the best relievers in the game heading into this offseason.
It’s concerning that the Pirates had Stephenson for three in-season months, plus Spring Training, and they didn’t come up with this solution. Even after watching him struggle. The Pirates didn’t really do much to adjust Stephenson to generate his success. They adjusted his pitch usage. When he hit a wall, there was no immediate fix.
Oscar Marin has been the pitching coach in Pittsburgh since Derek Shelton took over as the manager after the 2019 season. The Pirates have seen pitch adjustments and changes under Marin, but they’ve been slower than the one with Stephenson and the Rays. A lot of the success stories under the Pirates haven’t been minute adjustments that turn a bad pitch into a great one. They’ve been adjustments where a pitcher essentially learns how to pitch in the majors by throwing his best stuff first. This is the basic level MLB adjustment, and Snyder and the Rays are an example of advanced MLB development.
Two of the green flags in the bullpen this year are indicators of the more introductory development working for the Pirates.
ALMOST GREEN: THOMAS HATCH
The Pirates were short on pitchers in early August 2023, as they began putting together the makings of their bullpenning approach for two of the five rotation spots. On August 6th, they claimed Thomas Hatch off waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays.
Toronto originally acquired Hatch at the trade deadline 2019, when current Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington was working as a Vice President with the Blue Jays. Hatch went on to pitch in the majors across the next four seasons, struggling each time with Toronto. This year, he made a lot of progressive improvements to his slider, never getting a long opportunity with the Blue Jays. After joining the Pirates, Hatch led with the pitch.
At the deadline in 2023, Cherington had acquired left-hander Bailey Falter in a minor deal for infielder Rodolfo Castro. On August 10th against the Braves, Falter allowed four runs in four innings of work, with eight hits and two home runs. The Pirates called upon Hatch in relief, who allowed a single to Travis d’Arnaud, before getting a strikeout and a double play. Hatch returned for the sixth inning, setting the Braves down in order with two groundouts and a fly out. The Pirates came back and took the lead in the bottom of the sixth. The Pirates went to Hatch for a third inning of work. He allowed a single to Austin Riley, but got three outs in the seventh, including getting d’Arnaud in his second appearance. The Pirates scored two more runs in the bottom of the seventh. Hatch returned and retired the side in order in the eighth, ending with a strikeout against Kevin Pillar. Hatch finished the day with four shutout innings.
That was the longest appearance of the year for Hatch in the majors, and it was enough to lock down a role in the bullpen and starting mix for the remainder of the season. Hatch turned 29 at the end of September, and put up a 4.03 ERA and a 4.06 FIP in 22.1 innings with the Pirates. Despite the age, I think there’s potential from Hatch.
What I like about Hatch is the offspeed stuff. The league average for swinging strike rates was 11.1% overall last year. Hatch throws four pitches that generated a higher swing and miss rate. The best was his changeup, which had a 20.2% swinging strike rate. The changeup also had an above-average chase rate (37.7% vs 31.9%), and below average contact on chase swings (39.1% vs 62.3%). Hatch also excels with his slider/cutter combo, giving him a breaking pitch to throw for strikes in the zone with the slower slider. He has an elite chase pitch with the harder cutter. Hatch also has a decent fastball combo.
The Pirates should keep Hatch through the offseason, rather than risking him to waivers for a roster spot. Thus far, they’ve done that. Hatch is a guy who could give the Pirates around 100 innings over the course of a season, with a pitch arsenal to get outs at least once through an order. The traditional approach would be to either scale him up and expect six innings every time, or scale him down and hope for Stephenson results from a small selection of pitches. The Pirates will need to resume the non-traditional role of bullpen games, which creates an opportunity for a pitcher like Hatch to shine.
I think if the Pirates had a group of starting options who could reliably go 3-4 innings, Hatch could follow them up one game a week with a 3-4 inning appearance. If the goal from the bullpenning approach is to get to inning seven, and let the single-inning relievers take over, then Hatch is the perfect long-relief option. He’s also potentially a nice starting depth option if he untangles his pitch arsenal.
GREEN FLAG: RYAN BORUCKI
The Pirates recently agreed to a one-year deal with left-handed reliever Ryan Borucki, paying him $1.6 million for the 2024 season.
On May 7th this year, Borucki was a free agent. Placed on waivers by the Chicago Cubs, and left unclaimed by the remaining 29 teams, he refused an outright assignment to Triple-A and became a free agent. A few days later, the Pirates added the lefty on a minor league deal. He went to Indianapolis for eight scoreless appearances, before joining the MLB bullpen.
Borucki posted a 2.45 ERA and a 3.50 FIP with the Pirates this year, in his age-29 season. Unlike Hatch, Borucki has had success in the majors in the past, with his best years being in Toronto while Ben Cherington was with their organization. It’s notable that Hatch and Borucki were two of the biggest scouting success stories for the Pirates this year, and in both cases, the scouting and addition was influenced by familiarity from an old organization.
Borucki fared well from leading with his slider. I wrote about that last week, but I wanted to take a different look today, highlighting this chart from Baseball Savant. The chart below shows how often Borucki threw a pitch in any situation, starting with 0-0, and expanding out to each possible situation — with the bar showing the frequency of events.
Borucki leads with his slider in almost every situation, relying on it almost exclusively to bail him out of 3-0 and 3-1 counts. It’s a pitch that he can throw in the zone and get strikes, both looking and swinging. He mixes in his sinker/changeup about a third of the time, and starts leaning on the sweeper for chase action as he gets into 0-2 and 1-2 pitcher’s counts.
The slider from Borucki has shown results in the past, both in terms of swing and miss, and overall effectiveness. This is the first year he led with the pitch, and he got more comfortable with that approach as the season went on, with better results as he increased the reliance on his slider. Kevin Gorman of the Trib had a good article on Borucki’s comfort in throwing the pitch for a first pitch strike.
Borucki may have made some adjustments with the Pirates to get his pitch selection on track. His pitches maxed out to their previous best production, which is good. It’s not the same as Stephenson unleashing something brand new.
RED VS GREEN
What is the significance of the Pirates failing to maximize the talent with Robert Stephenson? Minimal.
Stephenson was under control for one season. He’s currently the number 27 ranked free agent in baseball by MLBTR, projected to receive four years and $36 million. If the Pirates did fix Stephenson in the same way, they would have won a few more games in a losing season in 2023, and might have gotten a slightly higher upside trade return. We’d be talking about the potential of a rookie teenager who no one has seen before, rather than 24-year-old Alika Williams, who we can all stream every night in Triple-A or the majors.
If we only grade moves by this standard — the production a player has with the team, the meaningfulness of that production when compared to the team’s season, and the potential long-term value of an individual player — we miss the point.
The point is that the Pirates did not take Stephenson to the next level. In thinking about the situation, I can’t think of any cases where they had similar success.
Hatch is an example of a guy having success from adjusting his pitch usage. He previously led with a four-seam fastball, before moving to a slider-heavy approach. That approach began in 2022, and the Pirates benefitted from being the first team to trust Hatch for a long period in the majors with the new approach.
Borucki is a similar example. He moved to a slider-heavy approach this year, moving away from the sinker-heavy style of his earlier years. The slider did improve, but not to unseen levels from Borucki. If the Pirates coaches are to get credit here, it’s for restoring Borucki to previous levels, rather than improving him. There’s also the micro-level pitch usage factors, where Borucki got comfortable throwing his sweeper on the first pitch, catching opponents off guard. Eventually, that will be the expectation from Borucki, and it remains to be seen if his pitches will be as effective when there’s more of a book on him.
Hatch and Borucki are green flags. The Pirates have relievers who showed that they know how to pitch in the majors, with pitches that can generate outs across a lot of innings and appearances. From a development standpoint, there are some yellow flags that dull the tone of these greens.
In my view, Hatch and Borucki are at the same risk of struggling next year as Stephenson. As opponents get a better book on those pitchers, and as those pitchers go up against fresh minds in April, their slider-heavy approaches might not be as effective. We saw that happen with Stephenson, and the Pirates were unable to make an adjustment. The adjustment was there to be made, as shown by the Rays.
That’s the red flag. Next year there might be an adjustment needed for Hatch or Borucki, if the league figures out how to counter what worked for each pitcher in a limited amount of 2023 innings. I’m confident that Oscar Marin can take next year’s batch of waiver claims and find one or two guys who just need a pitch adjustment, or an adjustment to return to what they’ve previously been doing.
I am not as confident that Marin will be able to make adjustments to quickly take pitchers to levels they haven’t seen. We simply haven’t seen that happen. The closest would be Mitch Keller adding a sinker and cutter combo, but that progress has now taken years, rather than an instantaneous change.
For the Pirates to win long-term, they can’t rely on just finding sleepers who stand out within a season. They need to develop the ability for players to have success when the other team knows what is coming. They are good at teaching pitchers ways to get ahead in the count, but they’ve yet to find ways to allow pitchers to get ahead of hitters for the long-term.
The Pirates are going with Marin and the same pitching approach in 2024, as Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, Anthony Solometo, Bubba Chandler, and other top prospects are set to arrive. Based on the results we’ve seen, I think Marin can adjust these upper level pitchers to being able to stick in the majors. However, my prediction is we’re left hoping for them to take the next unseen steps, with a pitching development program that has only been able to produce more base-level results, and no idea how to replicate what the Rays are getting from their program.
CONTENT UPDATE
I’ll have an article later this week on the hitting and pitching coaches, and the challenges they face in Pittsburgh. I spent ten hours researching and writing yesterday, with a good look at Jared Triolo coming up this week. Around 7 PM, I shut things down and watched Joel Embiid and the 76ers destroy the Lakers. There might even be an article about basketball by the weekend.
I’ll have my next site update this weekend, with a behind the scenes look at what I have planned for this site in 2024. If you need to reach me, my email address is tim@piratesprospects.com.
SONG OF THE DAY
