Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Soft-Tossing Prospects to Watch in 2022

While pitchers are throwing harder and harder, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any good soft-tossing pitchers. Here are three soft-tossing Pittsburgh Pirates prospects to watch.

Across all of baseball, including with the Pittsburgh Pirates, pitchers are throwing harder and harder. Back in the late-90’s to very early-2000’s, if you had a guy hitting 95-97 MPH consistently, he was probably considered a flamethrower. Today, every team has about a half-dozen, if not more, players, on the 40-man roster who can hit 95-97 consistently.

Last season the average fastball was 93.5 MPH. A decade ago, the average fastball was only 91.5 MPH. The last time the average fastball velocity league-wide was below 90 MPH was in 2002. It goes without saying that average fastball velocity only continues to tick upward.

But while there are a ton of hard-throwing pitchers, you don’t have to be a flamethrower to be successful. Last season Adam Wainwright had a huge season with the St. Louis Cardinals while featuring a four-seamer that averaged 89.1 MPH. Late career Bartolo Colon and Kyle Hendricks have made careers in the late-2010’s and into the 2020’s throwing in the mid-to-upper-80’s, relying on laser-like command.

Wade Miley, Marcus Stroman, and Sean Manea all had quality seasons with fastballs that were below 93 MPH. Even relievers like Tyler Rogers, Brent Suter, Richard Bleier, Collin McHugh, and Brooks Raley had great campaigns in 2021 despite averaging 90 MPH or lower.

Now some of the Pittsburgh Pirates best pitching prospects are hard throwers. Roansy Contreras averages around 96-98 MPH. Quinn Priester, 95-97 MPH, Jared Jones, 96-99 MPH, Carmen Mlodzinski, 95-98 MPH. But they also have some prospects that fly under the radar, simply because their fastballs aren’t 96+ MPH.

These prospects are still noteworthy nonetheless. They have the stuff and the command to make a 92 MPH fastball work. They have the breaking stuff and make-up to use the low-velocity to their advantage. I’m considering soft-tossing any pitcher who averages less than 95 MPH. So with that out of the way, let’s look at our first prospect.