Pittsburgh Pirates: Analyzing Farm System’s Best Pitching Tools

With MLB Pipeline and FanGraphs releasing their top Pittsburgh Pirates prospects, let’s take a look at each of the team’s best tools, starting with pitchers.

FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline have now released both of their Pittsburgh Pirates top prospect lists. Each player is given grades for each of their tools. For pitchers, they’ll give them grades for each of their pitches plus their control on MLB Pipeline and command on FanGraphs. For hitters, they’ll give tools for their hit, power, running/speed, fielding and arm.

Today, we will be looking at each of the best tools for a pitcher including their fastball, curveball, slider, changeup plus their command/control. These tools are on the 20-80 scale where 20 is well below average and 80 is elite. FanGraphs gives both current and projected future grades for their tools as well, which will also be taken into account. We will start with the best fastball the Pittsburgh Pirates have in their farm system.

Fastball

Tahnaj Thomas

Fangraphs: 70 current, 80 future

MLB Pipeline: 65

Tahnaj Thomas, unsurprisingly, has the best fastball in the system. The 6’4″, 190 pound right-hander can reach triple digits with the offering and averages out in the 93-98 MPH range. Not only is he a flamethrower, but he also can put decent spin on the pitch at 2300 RPM. FanGraphs sees it as potentially one of the best fastballs among all prospects with a future-80 grade.

The prospect last pitched with the Pirates’ Rookie-Ball affiliate in 2019. The right-hander put up very solid numbers including a 3.17 ERA, 3.67 FIP and 1.11 WHIP through 48.2 innings of work. His big fastball helped him strikeout 29.5% of all the batters he faced. He previously struggled with control when he was a Cleveland Indians farmhand, but cut his walk rate down to a fantastic 7% rate. Home runs weren’t a huge issue for him either as he put up a 0.93 HR/9 rate.

Thomas’s breaking ball has been identified as both a slider and curveball. Up until this year, FanGraphs graded it out as a curve, but recently gave it a 55-future grade as a slider. Meanwhile, MLB Pipeline also sees it as a 55-grade slider. He also will throw a change up, a pitch he’s working on and could be his ticket to staying in the rotation long term. His command is seen as a 60-grade tool in the future as well, an upgrade from the 55-grade he got likely from his improved ability to locate.

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.

Slider

Jared Jones

FanGraphs: 50 Current, 60 Future

MLB Pipeline: 55

This one was a bit tougher as there wasn’t a clear player out in front like before. Both Jared Jones and Brennan Malone have well above average sliders. MLB Pipeline see’s Malone’s slider as a 60 while FanGraphs has it as a 55-future grade, while Jones has opposite grades. Ultimately, I chose Jones as I weighed FanGraphs’s ratings a bit more.

The Pittsburgh Pirates selected Jones with their second-round pick in 2020. He was a high school pick and was taken out of La Mirada High School. The team selected him with the 44th overall pick in the draft.

According to MLB Pipeline’s write-up on Jones the best version of his slider sits in the 80-82 MPH range and has harder break. He also misses a fair amount of bats with the pitch. Jones also works with a fastball that sits around 96-97 MPH. This is seen as a 60-grade offering by MLB Pipeline and FanGraphs. He’ll also throw in a changeup, which has the potential to be a third average or better offering.

Jones is still young as this upcoming season will be his age 19 season. He’ll turn 20 in early August. Right now, both FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline rank him as the team’s 17th best prospect. However given his potential, he could rise and be one of the team’s top 10-12 prospects before the end of the season.