Pittsburgh Pirates: Looking Ahead to 2022 for Three Starting Pitchers

The Pittsburgh Pirates will have a handful of returning players from 2021. But what does next season hold for these three starting pitchers?

The 2021 Pittsburgh Pirates were not the most exciting team to watch in baseball. They finished with a 61-101 record. They should see some improvement in 2022 given that some of their best prospects will see some decent bit of time in the major leagues. Roansy Contreras, Oneil Cruz, Travis Swaggerty, Miguel Yajure, Diego Castillo, Rodolfo Castro, Mason Martin, and Omar Cruz could be part of the roster by June. Later in the summer, you may see guys like Ji-Hwan Bae, Carmen Mlodzinski, and Canaan Smith-Njigba.

But there will be a handful of players returning to the Pirates in 2022 from the 2021 team. Most of the returning players will be pitchers. The team has a handful of arms that threw for the 2021 team and should be part of the 2022 roster.

So let’s take a look at a few arms that should be on the 2022 roster and get a potential chance to start next season.

Max Kranick

The Pittsburgh Pirates promoted Max Kranick early into the 2021 season. After a handful of solid starts between Double-A and Triple-A Kranick came up and fired 5 perfect innings against the division rival St. Louis Cardinals. The only reason he didn’t pitch more innings was that his outing was cut short by an unfortunate rain delay that caused him to get yanked from the game.

Though he wasn’t able to replicate anything similar to his strong outing after that. In Kranick’s next 8 starts, he would reach 5 innings pitched just twice and gave up fewer than 3 earned runs once. All told, his final 33.2 innings yielded 27 earned runs. He had a solid 1.07 HR/9 rate during these starts, but a poor 17.4% strikeout  and 11.4% walk rate.

There were a few positives as he had an opponent exit velocity of 88.2 MPH and a 33.9% hard-hit rate. Both are slightly above the league average rate. Kranick currently ranks as the team’s 35th best prospect. Not too shabby given the depth of the Pirate system.

The right-hander throws four offerings: a four-seam fastball, slider, curveball, and change-up. His fastball saw an uptick in velocity at the alternative site last year and averaged out around 94 MPH. All four pitches are considered to have average potential by FanGraphs. Throughout the minor leagues, Kranick was not a very big strikeout guy, but he was decent at limiting walks and his biggest strength was preventing the home run.

Kranick will definitely get a shot to start the year in the rotation. He could be a solid back of the rotation type of starter, sort of a right-handed Tyler Anderson. He’s a guy that has the potential to go out and give you 5 solid innings. I also think he may see some time out of the bullpen. If Yajure, Contreras, and Cruz look solid, and eventually Mlodzinski joins the team in June/July, then Kranick may end up getting a few pen outings. His stuff may also play up out of the pen.

Bryse Wilson

The Pittsburgh Pirates were quite active at the 2021 trade deadline. One of the trades they made was with the eventual World Series-winning Atlanta Braves, who sent over two young pitchers for reliever Richard Rodriguez. One of the two arms they got back was major league ready in the form of Bryse Wilson.

Wilson was formerly one of Atlanta’s top prospects. But going into 2021, he had yet to receive a regular chance to start. From his debut in 2018 up through 2020, the right-hander had just 42.2 innings under his belt plus 6 more from the 2020 postseason. He then added 33.2 more before the trade.

Throughout the minors, Wilson has done pretty well. He has 198.1 total innings pitched at Triple-A, having a solid 3.86 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, and 3.64 FIP. He had a solid 1.18 HR/9 rate and a usable 22.8% strikeout rate. But he excelled at limiting free passes. Wilson only allowed 45 total batters to reach via a walk, leading to a strong 5.5% BB%. His K/BB ratio was a healthy 4.18 mark.

So far, Wilson hasn’t done all that well in the major leagues. He has a 5.55 ERA, 5.47 FIP, and 1.58 WHIP in 116.2 innings. But he’s yet to be given a real shot to prove himself. Nor did the Braves ever give him anything that resembled a fair and consistent shot in the major leagues. Just this year alone, the Braves recalled, and then optioned Wilson back to Triple-A  a total of six times before the trade. He’s been sent to Triple-A 16 total times since his debut in 2018.

Wilson may not have anything overpowering, but he has excellent command that helps his offerings play up. Currently, FanGraphs sees his command at a 55-grade and projects it to reach a 60-grade. Wilson was formerly ranked among the Braves’ top prospects. Going into 2019, FanGraphs ranked him as the team’s 10th best prospect and the 72nd best overall. He topped out at #60 on Baseball Prospectus’ pre-2019 rankings. The Braves had one, if not the best farm system in the late-2010’s, so ranking that high for Wilson was impressive.

Wilson is still pretty young. He will be going into his age-24 campaign and has just over 100 MLB innings under his belt. What he needs more than anything is regular playing time. Getting shipped back-and-forth from the major leagues to the minor leagues six times before August probably isn’t a good way to get acclimated to major league hitters. No player that bounces around that much will ever find success in the majors because they’re never being given a consistent shot or enough time to figure it out.

At the very least, I think he’s a solid #4 starter, like 2021 Zack Greinke (low-4.00 ERA pitcher, limits walks). At the most, maybe even a very low-end #2/high-end #3 starter, such as a right-handed Wade Miley (mid-3.00 ERA pitcher with good control). Many experts had Wilson as one of the higher-end pitching prospects in baseball. It wasn’t just one or two sites either. He was a consensus top 100 prospect going into 2019. All of FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline, Baseball Prospectus, and Baseball America had him in their top 100. Maybe all he needs is regular playing time. Time will tell, but I believe he can be a very competent MLB pitcher in 2022.