Pittsburgh Pirates: Team to Promote Pitcher Luis Ortiz

The Pittsburgh Pirates are continuing to give their young players chances at the Big League level.  They will now call up a promising pitching prospect.

The Pittsburgh Pirates should call up Quinn Priester and give him a start at the Big League level to end the season.  He is their top pitching prospect and deserves to get an opportunity much like Roansy Contreras did at this time last year.  However, it looks like a different pitching prospect is going to get the call first.

After another series loss against the Cardinals, the Pittsburgh Pirates are trying to give us fans some light to look forward to. This is especially true as the team looks for future impact pitchers.  According to Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the team is set to call up one of their breakout pitching prospects:

Luis Ortiz was a relatively off-the-radar prospect for the Pittsburgh Pirates when he first joined the Organization.  He signed back in 2018 for a small signing bonus that was not even worth  6 digits.  Furthermore, he signed as a 19-year-old out of the Dominican Republic, again something that is somewhat out of the ordinary.  After all, players from the International Market can sign as young as 16 years of age.

Still, Ortiz has quickly moved up the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system and is now ranked as the team’s 15th best prospect according to FanGraphs.  Ortiz is 6’2” and weighs around 240 pounds.  His best pitch is his fastball which has been hitting triple digits at times this year.  He has solid secondary offerings, which shouldn’t be a surprise.  After all, he did throw 6 no-hit innings, which is obviously not easy to do with just a power fastball.

Ortiz has a highly regarded slider as well, earning a 60 value on FanGraphs, meaning it’s well above average.  This gives Ortiz a high floor to become a Big League pitcher.  At the very least he should make a quality relief arm, but he should get a chance to start first.  He has a changeup that is more for a show pitch at this point.  If he can develop that pitch then he could be in line for the rotation next summer.