Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Roansy Contreras Continues to Dominate

Pittsburgh Pirates pitching prospect Roansy Contreras had yet another great outing with the Altoona Curve on Tuesday evening

If you’ve followed any of our prospect reports this season you’ll know that Pittsburgh Pirates right-handed pitching prospect Roansy Contreras has been covered here a whole bunch. It’s for a good reason too. He’s been flat-out dominant and super exciting to watch at Double-A this season. So far, he’s given up 1 or fewer earned run in five of his seven starts.

Contreras posted another excellent outing on Tuesday evening for the Altoona Curve. The hard-throwing right-hander went 7 innings, allowed 1 earned run on a home run with 10 strikeouts. Just a single batter was able to draw a walk against Contreras. Though he gave up a long ball, it was just his second of the season and one of the two hits he gave up all game. In total, he only had two runners on base the entire game.

Contreras did give up a second unearned run, but Altoona’s best defense wasn’t on display on Tuesday evening. There were three errors made. One was made by slugging top prospect Oneil Cruz, who has long been speculated to move to an outfield position, a second made by hot-hitting infield prospect Rodolfo Castro, and a third made by third baseman Josh Bissonette.

With Contreras’ outstanding start, his bottom line looks like the following: 2.03 ERA, 2.18 FIP and 0.80 WHIP through 40 innings of work. Contreras has a 37% strikeout rate and has lowered his walk rate to sub-6%, down to 5.8%. His 2 home runs allowed all season have resulted in a 0.45 HR/9 rate. Plus, he’s gotten batters to hit a ground ball 51.2% of the time and line drives just 12.2% of the time. His 2.65 xFIP is another outstanding mark that backs up his strong bottom-line results.

Before this start, he has recently moved up FanGraphs’ prospect boards. Not only has his numbers looked ten times better this year compared to 2019, but his overall stuff has looked better. He’s throwing harder with more break and better control. At this pace, Contreras will be a consensus top 100 prospect by the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022.