BRADENTON, Fla. – It used to be that the Pirates would draft a prep pitcher then send him to the New York-Penn League during his first full professional season. They wanted to challenge their prep pitchers by sending them to a level higher than the Gulf Coast League, but they didn’t want to send them to full season ball in their first year out of high school.
The NYPL is a college league. It’s a league where first round draft picks and most top ten round picks out of college go right after the draft. Sending a high school pitcher to that level is an aggressive push since it amounts to the best players from college, essentially replicating an NCAA All-Star team for every squad.
In the 2014 season, the Pirates added a new short-season franchise in Bristol, which is part of the Appalachian League. The league is technically rookie ball, but is half a step up from the GCL, and half a step down from the NYPL. That’s where the lower drafted college players will go, along with JuCo players and a lot of second year prep players. The push is not as aggressive, but a good transition, and easier than the NYPL.
The Pirates started sending their prep pitchers to Bristol, rather than their NYPL affiliate. They went prep pitcher heavy in the 2014 draft, taking Mitch Keller, Gage Hinsz, and Trey Supak. A year later, those three were in Bristol. Keller and Hinsz followed up by joining West Virginia in 2016. So they ended up at the same level that the Pirates were always sending prep pitchers in their second full year after being drafted, just with a different stop along the way.
“The Penn League is really a college league,” Pirates’ Director of Minor League Operations Larry Broadway said. “You look at Bristol, it’s a nice transition from high school or complex baseball to get under the lights. So it’s not a ton of long road trips, a lot of commuters, a lot of host families, which is a great situation to kind of get away from the confines of Pirate City or the Dominican Academy. But you still have some structure, you still have somebody who is taking care of you and making sure that the basic needs are met.
“I think it’s a good transition. It’s worked out well for us, and it’s nice where you don’t feel like a guy isn’t ready for the Penn League, so they’ve got to spend another year in the GCL. This allows you to get some time in the GCL, and then get some time in the Appy league, and from there see how well you’ve progressed. May be ready for a full season next year, it depends on the guy.”
Bristol is going to be a place to watch later this year. The Pirates went heavy on prep pitchers once again in 2016, and will be sending all of those draft picks to the Appy league this year. The group isn’t entirely on the same level. Fourth round lefty Braeden Ogle and 11th round right-hander Max Kranick are the more advanced pitchers from the group, and might have an easier time in Bristol. Second round pick Travis MacGregor shows some promise, but has some work to do with his command. Then there’s 33rd round pick Austin Shields, who is very raw due to a short history of pitching, and shows it on the mound, mixed in with some potential due to his velocity.
You could make an argument that Kranick and Ogle could handle the NYPL, while Shields might be better off in the GCL. However, the Pirates also like to keep the players as a group rather than splitting them up so soon.
“I think there’s value in them being together. Just trying to keep groups of guys together,” Broadway said. “Having some continuity and chemistry together. Kind of thinking a bit of themselves as a class moving together.”
So far, all four of those pitchers have been active in Spring Training, despite the fact that they won’t pitch in a competitive game until the short-season leagues begin. They each threw multi-inning sim games, and have since progressed to games. Ogle has gotten the most work, while Shields has gotten the least. None of the pitchers have gone beyond three innings, and that probably won’t happen until later in extended Spring Training.
“They’ve typically gone out and gotten two [innings] right away,” Broadway said of the approach with prep pitchers in the past. “Most of them won’t go five or six in Spring Training. We’ll get them built up and kind of back them down a little bit towards the end, and then ramp them back up once extended starts. They typically get to three, four inning outings in Spring Training. Kind of dependent on where some of the other guys are at.”
I’ve had a chance to see all four pitchers this spring. I wrote about what Kranick and MacGregor are working on here, while providing a brief recap of Shields here. I’ve got an article on Ogle coming up tomorrow. Those four pitchers will make Bristol a team to watch this year, and extended Spring Training very interesting in the mean time. If the Pirates can get one of them to emerge in a year or two the way that Mitch Keller and Gage Hinsz have emerged in the last year, they will be in nice shape with another good wave of pitchers coming through the lower levels.
