Pittsburgh Pirates Minors: More Praise For Quinn Priester

Ladies and gentlemen, Quinn Priester is going to be really, really good. The Pittsburgh Pirates selected Priester with the 18th overall selection in the 2019 MLB Draft. When he was drafted, many publications ranked Priester as the best prep pitcher in that year’s draft.

Priester quickly made an impact professionally, posting a 3.19 ERA and a 3.17 FIP in nine games (eight starts) with the GCL Pirates and short-season West Virginia Black Bears in the summer of 2019. In these nine outings, Priester pitched 36.2 innings, walking 8.8% of batters faced, striking out 25.8% and allowing just one home run.

Very quickly, it became clear why the Pittsburgh Pirates were so high on him in the 2019 draft.

Currently, Priester ranks as the 7th best prospect in the Pirate farm system according to FanGraphs while MLB Pipeline ranks his 4th. However, Priester could be in line for a big jump in prospect rankings.

According to Jim Callis of MLB Pipeline, scouts have told him that Priester has the potential to be one of the absolute best pitching prospects in baseball. In fact, Callis has said that Priester could become the best pitching prospect in baseball.

This is some very high praise for the young righty. Priester took the ball and pitched at instructional camp this fall where he impressed. He impressed in the instructional league with a mid-90s power sinker, a plus curveball which is already a plus pitch and a quickly developing change up.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of talent pitching prospects in their farm system such as Brennan Malone, Tahnaj Thomas, Carmen Mlodzinski, Jared Jones, and Cody Bolton. They will also likely add Kumar Rocker with the top pick in July’s draft. However, Priester appears to have the highest ceiling of them all.