Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: 3 Top Relievers

Enmanuel Mejia

Enmanuel Mejia is one of the best Pirate relief pitching prospects. Mejia was an international signee out of the Dominican Republic in 2019. Mejia couldn’t have asked for a better start for his pro career. In 20.2 innings at the Dominican Summer League, Mejia had a 1.74 ERA, 1.07 FIP, and 0.82WHIP. He struck out just under 50% of all batters he faced (46.3%) while having an 8.8% walk rate. Did I mention he didn’t allow a single home run?

Mejia kept dominating batters at Low-A Bradenton in 2021. He started his season off reeling off 26.1 straight scoreless innings. He did see his walk rate 15.3% of batters faced, but he struck out 31.5% of batters faced. With no home runs given up, he had a 3.03 FIP. When Mejia was moved up to High-A Greensboro, he would keep opponents to just 2 earned runs in 16.1 innings. But his strikeout rate fell to 25.7%, gave up 2 home runs, and still kept a weak 14.3% walk rate.

Still, to start your professional career with 47 innings with no home runs, just 4 earned runs, and 72 strikeouts are pretty good, and that’s a massive understatement. He works in the mid-90’s with his four-seamer and uses a curveball as his breaking pitch. He showed some command issues last year, but he only had an 8.8% walk rate in 2019. If he can cut it down to 8%-10% next year, he’ll be just fine.

Mejia could start 2022 at Double-A Altoona. His 16.2 innings at Greensboro weren’t fantastic, but they were solid at the very least. He’ll be 23-years-old for all of next season, which is a reasonable age to start him at Double-A. Regardless of where he starts, Mejia is arguably the team’s best minor league reliever.