BRADENTON, Fla. – It’s not a surprise the Pirates acquired Pat Light when he became available prior to Spring Training. Light fits the type of pitcher they usually seek out. He’s tall with a big frame. He can throw hard, topping out at 100 MPH, and averaging around 95 MPH with his fastball. He’s got a pretty high ground ball rate. He strikes people out. And he has control problems, which is a negative, but something the Pirates have done a good job with fixing with other players.
Light isn’t a guy who has a shot at winning a spot on the big league club out of camp. Even if he does well, the Pirates have several options ahead of him at the back of the MLB bullpen. But he’s a guy with two option years remaining, and six years of control. If they can fix him, they’ll end up getting a nice, low-cost reliever.
They’ve already started that work, aiming from the start of camp at improving Light’s control. The big focus right now is keeping his front side closed longer. Light has a tendency to fly open too soon, which has been the cause of his control issues.
“It’s been an issue my whole life, pretty much,” Light said. “It’s one of those things where, when I rush, it’s tough to get my arm to catch back up. It’s just something I wanted to recognize early on and make an adjustment.”
If Light’s control can be fixed, then he could be a very good reliever, due primarily to one pitch: the splitter. He’s a two-pitch guy, using the fastball to set up the splitter. He throws the splitter in any count, although it’s best when he can use it as an out pitch. It’s deceptive, coming out looking like a fastball, but showing a lot of action, and some separation in velocity. While the fastball sits around 95, the splitter is usually 86-89 MPH.
“I lean on it a lot to get people out,” Light said. “That’s my strikeout pitch. It’s been really good for me. And it’s kind of revitalized my career as a strikeout guy. Because I wasn’t very much a strikeout guy early in my career.”
Light was up in the majors briefly in 2016, and had a 40% strikeout rate on that pitch, along with a .513 OPS. He got a swinging strike 19.3% of the time. The problem is that his fastball was hit pretty hard and showed no control, making it so that he couldn’t set up the second pitch.
He learned the splitter from his dad while messing around with grips. He threw it in college, although it wasn’t exactly planned.
“I threw it one day while out throwing with one of my teammates in college, and my pitching coach happened to see it, and said maybe we should start throwing it,” Light said. “So I started throwing it, trying to get a feel for it, and it started taking off from there.”
He has seen some high strikeout rates throughout his career, although the high walk rates have been an issue, especially once he started moving up in the minors. It’s not an easy task to fix control problems, although the Pirates have had some success with it. Light’s velocity, splitter, and age would have put him in the back half of our top 50 prospect list, likely just outside of the top 30, due to the upside he has if there can be a fix. If that fix happens in Indianapolis this year, then expect Light to make the majors at some point in the second half, at which point he could become a nice depth option for the Pirates’ bullpen.
