Pittsburgh Pirates 2022 Prospect Outlook: Pitcher Austin Roberts

Pitching prospect Austin Roberts will continue to look to climb the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league ladder during the 2022 season

One of the more underrated members of the Pittsburgh Pirates 2019 draft class was right-handed pitcher Austin Roberts. Roberts was selected in the 8th round out of Sacramento State University and quickly made his professional debut.

Roberts pitched in 15 games, 5 starts, at Low-A in 2019. He logged 40 innings, posting a strong 2.70 ERA and 3.30 FIP. He walked just 7% of batters faced, while striking out batters at a 24.2% clip.

When the 2020 season came and there was no minor league season, Roberts was one of many prospects across baseball who did not pitch in games. Despite this, he saw an uptick in competition in 2021 as he was promoted to High-A.

During the 2021 season Roberts pitched in 39 games for Greensboro, all of them coming in relief. While he struck out 34.9% of batters faced, Roberts still took his lumps during the season. With a lot of his struggles stemming back to problems with the home run ball.

Roberts allowed 15 home runs in 65.1 innings pitched for the Grasshoppers, leading to a 2.07 HR/9. A factor in this was Roberts being burnt by a batting average on balls in play of .348, which is well above the average of .300.

Another factor in Roberts struggling with the long ball was his fly ball and ground ball rates. His fly ball rate rose to 45.2% after being 33.0% in 2019, while his ground ball rate dropped from 48.1% to 32.3%. Obviously, ground balls can’t turn into home runs, so a spike in fly balls and a decline in ground balls is a recipe for a pitcher to have home run problems. This happened to Roberts last season.

With the High-A and Double-A seasons over Roberts made his Triple-A debut in late September. This was done just to get him some additional work last season. In his lone outing with the Indianapolis Indians, the 23-year-old Roberts pitched 1.1 scoreless innings. Not only did he retied all four batters he faced he struck each of them out.

Looking ahead to the 2022 season Roberts would most likely appeared bound for Altoona to begin the season. The key to his success will be to get his ground ball and fly ball rates to revert back to his 2019 results instead of 2021.

If this occurs Roberts should be set up for a successful season out of the Curve bullpen. Especially if he continues to strike batters out at the rate he has throughout his professional career. Some regression to the norm in BAbip should do Roberts some good as well.

With a strong showing for the Curve it would not be a surprise to see the Pittsburgh Pirates promote Roberts back to Indianapolis before the end of the season. This time, however, it would be for more than just to get some work in. To be honest, Roberts getting a cup of coffee out of the Pirate bullpen in 2022 may not be completely out of the question.

Roberts could have a bright future as a reliever in the Pirate organization. As we often stress results in the minors are not the be all end all. Roberts has the tools to be a quality MLB reliever and this is shown most by his ability to generate swings-and-misses and whiff batters in the minor leagues.