Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Two Players Selected to Play in Futures Game

It was announced on Thursday that the Pittsburgh Pirates will have two prospects playing in the Futures Game as part of All-Star week festivities

Every year MLB’s All-Star week is filled with excitement for baseball fans. One of the most exciting part of the All-Star week festivities every years is the Futures Game. The Futures Game does a great job of highlighting some of baseball’s top prospects for fans to see before they reach the majors.

For this year’s Futures Game, the Pittsburgh Pirates will have two prospects representing the organization. These two prospects will be starting pitcher Mike Burrows and former no.1 overall draft pick, catcher Henry Davis.

Burrows started the season with Double-A Altoona and was borderline dominant. Burrows pitched 52 innings in 12 starts for the Curve, posting a 2.94 ERA and a 2.76 FIP. He walked just 8.9% of batters, while striking out 32.4%.

This earned Burrows a promotion to Triple-A Indianapolis. Through his first 3 starts at the Triple-A level Burrows has struggled, posting a 6.00 ERA in 12 innings pitched. However, he has allowed just a single home run while also issuing just a single walk, giving him 2.83 FIP. Once his 24.0% strikeout rate ticks up a bit and his .389 batting average on balls in play evens out closer to the league average of 3.00, his ERA should drop in a hurry.

As for Davis, he started the season at High-A Greensboro and was raking. In 100 plate appearances he hit for a .341/.450/.585 slash line to go with a wRC+ of 180. This led to him being promoted to Altoona.

After a slow start with the Curve, and a stint on the injured list, he has started to get hot in recent weeks. Overall, he owns a .177/.320/.355 slash line, 9.3% walk rate, just an 18.7% strikeout rate and a wRC+ of 93 in 75 PAs at the Double-A level.

Burrows is quickly combining prospect boards not that he has not just developed a changeup, but a plus changeup this season. He could debut this season, and by next summer should giving the Pittsburgh Pirates one hell of a 1-2 punch in their starting rotation with Roansy Contreras.

As for Davis, he is one of the top catching prospects in all of baseball. Thanks in large part to his ability to be an elite hitter at the position. It would be cool to see Burrows on the mound with Davis catching him at some point in the Futures Game, as this is a battery the Pirates are hoping to see a lot of in the coming year.