Pittsburgh Pirates Future Friday: J.T. Brubaker

This season the site will be posting articles every Friday that will be titled ‘Future Friday.’ These articles will be about a specific Pittsburgh Pirates minor league prospects who is having a successful season.

These articles will feature Pittsburgh Pirates prospects who range anywhere from top prospects to lower level players who are working their way up the prospect ranks. The articles will outline a bio about them, what they have done in their careers, how they are doing this year, and give some insight on what their future could potentially hold.

For this installment of the “Future Friday” series, right-handed pitcher JT Brubaker (John) will be the prospect of focus. The former Akron Zip was the Pirate’s 6th round selection in the 2015 draft. He was not considered a top 500 prospect in the 2015 draft, but the Pirates were intrigued by him anyhow. He signed for around 50,000 dollars less than slot. Brubaker has a three pitch mix which includes his four-seam fastball, a slider, and a curve ball. The Pirates are working on adding a change-up to his mix as well. Brubaker is a projectable right-handed pitcher who possesses good size at six-foot-four and whose fastball has topped at 95 miles per hour.

In college Brubaker was never really all that dominant. In his junior year he posted an ERA of 3.63 in 15 starts. By no means are those numbers overly impressive, however one positive is that he vastly improved his ERA each year. At the end of his freshmen year he had a 7.25 ERA, sophomore year he had a 4.02 ERA, and as mentioned before he dropped down to a 3.63 for his junior year.

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The Pirates obviously are intrigued with his size and arm as they used a higher pick on him. Brubaker signed quickly last year and found himself to the Short-Season-A team at Morgantown. He made 15 starts for the Black Bears and pitched well. In his 73.1 innings he posted a 2.82 ERA with a very strong 0.91 WHIP.

The Pirates typically skip over Low-A with college pitchers and send them straight to Bradenton, see Tyler Eppler and Bradon Waddell. However, the Pirates did not do this with JT and decided instead to put him at Low-A. This may be because of how raw Brubaker is still. His fastball currently sits around 92-93, with it topping out at 95. Coming into the system last year he was more of a 90-92 guy. Keeping him down at West Virginia is allowing him to continue to fill out into his frame and develop his secondary pitches.

One big knock against Brubaker is that he does not get a lot of strikeouts. His college K/BB ratio was 156/90 or 1.7 strikeouts for every walk. Typically you like to see pitchers above 2.5. He was considered more of a pitch to contact style of pitcher out of Akron. This is not necessarily an issue, but also it does suggest that he did not have overpowering pitches. With that being said, the Pirates’ pitching philosophy is to pitch to contact.

Last year he saw an up-tick in his K/BB ratio. At Morgantown he posted a 4.08 K/BB ratio with striking out 49 batter and only walking 12. His strikeouts per nine innings was still low at 6.01, but it was good to see a bigger gap between his strikeouts and walks. He also produced an impressive 1.63 ground out/air out rate. For those who may not know, this is similar to K/BB ratio.

So far this year J.T. Brubaker has been very impressive at the Low-A West Virginia level. He has shown that the Pirates maybe should have skipped him over this level and just sent him to High-A Bradenton. He has made five starts for the Power. In those five starts he has compiled a 2-1 record with a strong 2.61 ERA. He has also compiled 33 strikeouts to 10 walks which is a solid 3.3 K/BB ratio.

The even better news is that he is fanning more than a batter per inning as he has 33 strikeouts in 27 innings pitched. On top of all of those numbers he has a fantastic WHIP of 1.04 to start the year. The fact that Brubaker is seeing an uptick in his strikeouts and he still is limiting base runners is a positive sign.

A good player comparison for Brubaker is Jimmy Nelson of the Milwaukee Brewers. Nelson is a little bigger at s-foot-six and 250lbs and throws a little harder throwing 93-94, but is a good ceiling that Brubaker can be. Right now Nelson is the front-line start for the Brewers, but prior to this season his numbers were very average pitching around a 4.00 ERA. He is not over powering by any means and pitches to contact, producing a lot of ground balls, just like Brubaker seems to. In his career, Nelson also only strikes out about seven batters per nine innings. Brubaker does not seem likely to do much more than that at the MLB level.

Like most of the Pirates mid-round draft picks, J.T. Brubaker was drafted because of his size and projectablilty. The Pirates still need him to develop his secondary pitches, especially his change-up. However, his pitching IQ is high. He has the ability to pound the strike-zone and knows when he can nibble and when to hit the zone and produce a ground-ball.

Do not expect Brubaker to be at Low-A for much longer, at most two more starts. Brubaker’s upside is a number three starter. He will never be an overpowering pitcher, this will most likely keep him from ever being a top-end of the rotation candidate. However, if the 6th round pick is able to continue to develop and become a middle of the rotation arm than it will be another successful projectable pitching prospect.

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