Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Under the Radar Players to Watch in 2020

Pitcher Chad Kuhl

Chad Kuhl, despite missing most of 2018 and all of 2019 to Tommy John surgery, has a lot of potential in his arm. But so far in Kuhl’s career, he hasn’t put up the numbers you’d expect for a guy with his velocity and movement on his pitches.

In the 313 innings Kuhl has pitched at the MLB level, the right hander has a 4.37 ERA, 4.30 FIP and 1.42 WHIP. To go along with that, he only has a 20.4% strikeout rate and 9.2% walk rate. Although home runs haven’t been a big issue, they haven’t necessarily been his strong suit with a 1.1 HR/9. However he does have a solid 41% ground ball rate. Kuhl’s ERA estimators don’t paint him in a much brighter light with a 4.52 xFIP, 4.61 SIERA and 4.94 Deserved Run Average.

However, Kuhl’s pitch arsenal shows he can be a really good pitcher. Kuhl can run his fastball into the mid-to-upper-90s, hitting triple digits on occasion, along with some movement. In 2018, the pitch had 14.4 inches of vertical movement to go with 11.4 inches of horizontal movement. He was one of 22 pitchers who had both above average vertical and horizontal movement on their four-seamer and threw it for at least 95 MPH.

His curveball is the pitch that has the most potential, and it’s been his least used pitch throughout his career. Impressively, it sits in the top 96th percentile of spin rate, which gives it some of the most potential for outstanding movement in the Major Leagues. Kuhl can already put about 53.4 inches of vertical movement and 10.2 inches of horizontal movement on it, that being 6% and 24% better than the average.

He also uses a slider, change up and sinker. Though none of them have the kind of movement his fastball and curveball do, his slider still has above average movement both horizontally and vertically, and his change-up and sinker have above average horizontal movement.

To begin the season, Kuhl will piggyback starts with left-hander Steven Brault. Not only does this shortened season limit the risk of injury, but so will only having to pitch 3 or 4 innings each outing. This will help him ease back into playing after missing a season and a half from Tommy John surgery.