Pittsburgh Pirates: Breaking Down Each Breakout Pitching Candidate

JT Brubaker

JT Brubaker was the first-ever player I wrote an article on, hyping him up as a potential long-term arm for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I still believe that over two years later. Last year may not have been all that pretty, but the numbers underneath the surface point to potentially being a decent pitcher.

I’m not going to sugarcoat that a 5.36 ERA, 5.16 FIP, or 2.03 HR/9 are numbers that make up a guy who could be part of the team’s rotation long term. They’re pretty bad, and an HR/9 over 2 is very troubling. But it’s once you look past those numbers you see a pretty solid starting pitcher.

Brubaker had a quality 24% strikeout rate and a 7.1% walk rate, and all were at least .8% above the league average. The right-hander had a 42.8% ground ball rate, which was nearly exactly league average. Plus, he was about average in terms of exit velocity (88.9 MPH) and hard-hit rate (38.7%).

But despite those solid batted ball numbers, he had a 22.4 HR/FB rate. That is the 3rd highest HR/FB ratio in baseball history since recorded batted ball rates. Baseball Savant compares his batted ball profile to Sean Manea, Frankie Montas, and Jack Flaherty. Flaherty had the highest HR/9 at 1.38, over .5 better than Brubaker.

All of this is reflected in his very solid 4.00 xFIP, 4.04 SIERA, and 4.32 DRA. All of those are at least 5% better than average. Pretty much the most significant thing that went wrong for Brubaker was his HR/FB rate.

Brubaker pitched much better than his results said he did. Next year is his chance to prove he belongs in the starting rotation. Worst case scenario is that he ends up as a late-inning pen pitcher. His stuff did play well out of the bullpen and hit the mid-to-upper 90’s in the few innings he has tossed as a reliever. But I think he has the stuff to be a quality starting pitcher for the Pirates.