Pittsburgh Pirates Prospect 2021 Season Recap: Eddy Yean

Pittsburgh Pirates pitching prospect Eddy Yean finished up his first season in his new organization. So let’s take a look at how he did.

One of the multiple prospects the Pittsburgh Pirates received throughout the 2020-2021 offseason was right-handed pitcher Eddy Yean. He, along with Wil Crowe, was shipped to the Pirates for Josh Bell.

At the time of the trade, Yean was considered one of the Nats’ best prospects. He ended 2020 as their 7th best prospect on FanGraphs. So how did the young right-hander do in his first season with the Pittsburgh Pirates?

Well on the surface, things didn’t go all that well. Yean pitched 66.2 innings with the Bradenton Marauders. He limped to a 5.27 ERA, FIP, and 1.43 WHIP. While his 23.3% strikeout rate and 1.08 HR/9 were solid marks, he struggled heavily with walks. He dealt out a free pass 13.2% of the time.

Now granted, there were a handful of things that went in Yean’s favor. For one, he had a healthy 52.6% ground ball rate and only a 20% line-drive rate. He also kept opponents to an average against of just .222. He also was better throughout the summer. From June 18th through the end of the season (51 total innings), he had a much better looking 4.24 ERA, 4.19 FIP, 1.31 WHIP. His strikeout rate was a much healthier 25.5% mark, and he only allowed 3 home runs. Though he was still issuing free passes at a 12.3% rate. While not the best numbers overall, a low-4 ERA/FIP is much better than a low-5 ERA/FIP.

I’d also like to note that there were two outings that blew his numbers up. In two games on August 13th and May 5th, he gave up 5 earned runs and failed to pitch one whole inning. Outside of these two outings, he has a much more solid 3.97 ERA. Those two outings made up for less than 2% of all his innings pitched this year, but 25.6% of the earned runs he surrendered.

In 2019, Yean wasn’t a super hard thrower, only averaging out around 91-94 MPH. But it was reported this year that he was sitting in the mid-to-upper-90s with his four-seamer. He was averaging decent spin with 2300 RPM as well. If we go by average Bauer units (which is admittedly a fairly unfortunate name now), and Yean’s velocity increased at the same rate as his spin rate while having the same Bauer unit from 2019 (about 24.7), his four-seam fastball increased to about 2400 RPM. FanGraphs originally projected it to be a 60-grade offering and if he is throwing around 97 MPH with ~2400 RPM, it could easily reach that grade.

He also has a slider that sits around the upper-80’s. It’s another pitch that FanGraphs projects as above average. Finally, he has a change-up that, at the very worst, is an average third offering. Though FanGraphs sees it as another above-average pitch to his arsenal.

The issue with Yean is his command. While FanGraphs projects it to be about average and MLB Pipeline has his control at 45, he only has 25-grade command right now (as per FG). Obviously, if he can get that under control, he could be a really good pitching prospect, but it’s what is currently holding him back.

Yean’s 2021 season had its peaks and valleys. He had some good moments and some bad moments. Overall, he’s still very young. Yean is going into his age-21 season. This was the first time he pitched more than 15 innings in a season above Rookie-Ball. Still, he did have some improved stuff but didn’t get the bottom line results one would have liked.