PITTSBURGH – Every time I list the potential starting pitchers for the 2017 season, I always forget about Nick Kingham. That’s an easy thing to do, as the rest of the starting options have been pitching in Triple-A or the majors this year, while Kingham has been working his way back from Tommy John surgery in rookie ball and the lower levels below Triple-A.
The Pirates haven’t forgotten about Kingham though. He will go to Triple-A next year, and could be an option for the MLB rotation in the second half as a depth option, much like Steven Brault and Trevor Williams were this year. As for his timeline, that would be very similar to Jameson Taillon, who returned from Tommy John in 2015, and spent half of 2016 in Triple-A, before getting the call to the majors. Except, there is one key difference between Taillon and Kingham.
“That’s where the off-season of rest is important,” Pirates’ General Manager Neal Huntington said about Kingham’s chances of following the same path. “Jameson was ready to compete last season when the hernia took him down. Nick was able to go out and compete, but Jameson is a fairly unique guy. To compare anyone to him is hard, because he’s so mature, he’s so driven. It’s unfair to compare anyone to him. We’ll take Nick’s progress at his pace, and he’ll show us whether he’s ready to go.”
Kingham had something that Taillon didn’t have in his return — a chance to pitch in official games, and against High-A and Double-A lineups. Taillon was pitching in extended Spring Training games, but that was against short-season teams. His stuff still looked good, but he didn’t get a chance to show his adjustment to the upper level lineups. Meanwhile, Kingham got a chance to make those starts and continue his season, which isn’t exactly an advantage, since his command was off at times.
Huntington mentioned that Kingham did look good at times, but had those times where his command would wander, saying that “is very typical of guys with Tommy John.”
“He had some great outings,” Huntington said. “He had some outings in which it was great at times and not so great at other times. And he had some outings where it was a challenge for him. Fairly standard, coming back from Tommy John. As we look at 2017, we do fully see Nick in our picture at some point in time. We’ll see how he is coming into spring training. I think it’s more realistic to expect some time at the upper levels to get going, but we do anticipate he’ll help us late next year, or sometime during the summer.”
As far as Kingham’s command issues, his return was a bit more like Clay Holmes, and less like Taillon. You could chalk it up to another way no pitcher should be compared to Taillon, as Taillon really didn’t have any command issues coming back. But Holmes did have those issues in his return, and they didn’t start to settle down until the second half this year, in his first full season back from surgery. Kingham’s challenge next year will not only be getting re-adjusted to the upper level guys, but also getting his command back to a consistent place. It’s doubtful that he will be as successful in this regard as Taillon, but if he can improve his command issues as quickly as Holmes, then he could be an option for the second half in the majors.
Pitching Prospects in the Bullpen
The Pirates made a switch over the weekend, moving Steven Brault to the bullpen and putting Tyler Glasnow in the rotation. That didn’t go so well for Glasnow yesterday, although his experience in the bullpen left hope that Brault could learn something from a similar move.
“Love the way Steve Brault competes and love what he can become,” Huntington said. “Tyler learned some incredible lessons from three of four outings in the bullpen: Aggressiveness, simplify the approach, simplify the process and attack. We want to see how he could translate that back into the rotation, which is what he did in the minor leagues. For some reason, at the major-league level, he backed off and instead of attacking, tried to ‘pitch’ more than we needed him to.”
Glasnow didn’t exactly attack yesterday, and still had issues making the jump to the MLB rotation. There have been similar issues with Brault changing his approach in the MLB rotation, and the hope is that the move to the bullpen will help him.
“In Brault’s case, maybe we get that mentality back in him, because he’d been successful at the minor-league level in terms of attacking the bottom half, top half of the zone, changing speeds,” Huntington said. “Whereas here, there were times he was trying to make the perfect pitch. The benefit we believe Tyler obtained in the bullpen, we believe Steven might be able to do the same thing. We feel both are starters down the road, but we also felt Tyler gave us the best chance to win games and also gain some experience over these last two games.”
The experience would be the biggest factor for Glasnow, and the chance for the Pirates to make the playoffs is below one percent. He will likely get one more start in the big leagues this year to show whether he can carry his bullpen approach over to the rotation in the majors.
As for Brault, his next start in the big leagues would likely come next year, although it’s far from a guarantee that this would happen early in the season, or even at the start of the season. The current Pirates rotation projects to include Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon for sure, with Chad Kuhl and Drew Hutchison looking like they have inside tracks. If the Pirates add one starter, that guarantees Brault is out of the rotation mix. Even if they don’t add a starter, which I think is unlikely, he would be in competition with Glasnow and Trevor Williams for the final rotation spot.
So while the bullpen approach here is to get his rotation mentality back to what he was doing in the minors, it might end up that the bullpen is where Brault will make most of his future appearances with the Pirates, considering the rotation guys ahead of him.
