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Pittsburgh Pirates: Analyzing Farm System’s Best Pitching Tools
By Noah Wright
Curveball
Quinn Priester
FanGraphs: 70 Current, 80 future
MLB Pipeline: 60
The Pittsburgh Pirates selected Quinn Priester with their first-round pick in 2019 and he’s blossomed into their best pitching prospect. Part of his development into a top tier pitching prospect has been to his curveball. FanGraphs sees it as a potential 80-grade offering in the future while MLB Pipeline has it as a 60-grade pitch right now. Not only is it the best curveball among Pirates’ pitching prospects, but it’s also one of the best in the minor leagues.
Priester hasn’t had very much minor league play, tossing just 36.2 innings between Rookie-Ball and Low-A. However, he pitched extremely well posting a 3.19 ERA, 2.90 FIP and 1.255 WHIP. Priester allowed just a single home run while having a solid 25.8% strikeout rate and 8.8% walk rate.
While his curveball is a deadly weapon, it’s not the only pitch he can throw to an above average level. He also throws a fastball that both Pipeline and FanGraphs see as a 60-grade offering in the future. He averages out in the upper-90’s, hovering in the 94-97 MPH range, but can crank it up and has topped out at 99 MPH. He also has a slider and change-up, both of which MLB Pipeline sees as average offerings.
Much of the praise Priester has recently received was because of his work at the alternative training site and throughout instructionals. Priester went unranked on both FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline’s top 100 lists in 2020 to ranking at the #45 and #52 spots of each list respectively. MLB Pipeline’s Jonathan Mayo even stated that he has the potential to be the best pitching prospect in all of baseball in the very near future.