Pirates prospect Bubba Chandler just matched future rival with latest ridiculous feat

Sitting at the bottom of the NL Central, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in a familiar position of seemingly not being a contender. With just three playoff appearances since 1992, fans are used to this, but there is some hope beginning with Paul Skenes, who exploded onto the scene as a rookie last year and was arguably the best pitcher in all of baseball.

Adding to the hope is another highly-touted pitcher within the Pirates organization, in the shape of Bubba Chandler. He's the top-rated prospect in the Pirates' farm system according to MLB Pipeline, who also have him ranked as the fourth-best pitching prospect in baseball as a whole (and 14th among all Major League prospects).

Chandler is an all-around top quality athlete who also previously played football, and at one time was a two-way baseball player before deciding to focus on pitching with the Pirates. He has progressed tremendously after working hard on developing his array of pitches, which include a slider and changeup, but the fastball is still his bread and butter.

Pirates top prospect Bubba Chandler breaks the 101 mph barrier

In this respect, last season the 22-year-old's fastball averaged 96.7 mph and even touched 99 mph at its peak, according to Synergy.

Well, now he's taken his heater to yet another level and brought back memories, for this writer, of Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn in Major League:

It is intriguing that the pitcher Chandler has matched with his velocity is Hunter Greene, who is off to a ridiculously phenomenal start this year in Cincinnati with a 0.98 ERA, 1.66 FIP and 0.578 WHIP in his first four starts. (Greene also leads the Majors with a 1.5 WAR and 27.2 innings pitched.)

The thought of the two being future rivals who help re-energize the passion and hatred between the Pirates and Reds fanbases is something which must be extremely enticing to a lot of people in both cities.

When will Pirates' Bubba Chandler be called up? He could be Hunter Greene's mortal enemy by second half.

As alluded to, though, first things first: Chandler must continue to prove he will be more than a one-trick pony before making his seemingly inevitable Major League debut this season. In this respect, he has been excellent so far through three starts in Triple-A Indianapolis, with a 1.69 ERA, 0.844 WHIP and 18 strikeouts in 10.2 combined innings.

There's still a long road for the Pirates to go to return to being even a peripheral contender, but adding Chandler to Skenes, Jared Jones, and fellow prospect Thomas Harrington will have plenty of fans salivating about the rotation. And as for Chandler specifically, he will be aiming to regularly match arm strength (and ego) with Greene to see who has the better velocity.

Recent Posts