Pittsburgh Pirates are completely botching this top pitching prospect's development

Entering the 2025 season, one of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ best prospects was Thomas Harrington. He was a consensus top 100 prospect, ranking within the top 100 of MLB Pipeline, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus. Since that peak, the way the Pirates have handled his development at the Major League level is nothing short of pure incompetence from Ben Cherington once again.

The Pirates first promoted Harrington during just the second series of the season. The right-hander made one start and one appearance out of the bullpen, pitching a combined eight innings. He struggled, as he allowed nine earned runs, but it still came in less than a whole game’s worth of innings pitched. If the Pirates kept Harrington in the Major Leagues and gave him another chance, they would have maintained the opportunity for him to secure prospect promotion incentive rewards. However, the Pirates almost immediately demoted him back to Indianapolis.

Not only did that mean the Pirates lost their chance at PPI, but it also likely hasn't helped Harrington's ascent, a pitcher they entrusted with one of the very first starts of the season before sending him back down to Triple-A. Harrington’s numbers at Indy aren’t strong, as he has a 5.48 ERA, 5.52 FIP, and 1.35 WHIP over 90.1 IP. Harrington still has a respectable 21.3% strikeout percentage and a healthy 8.1% walk rate, but his 1.89 HR/9 is horrendous. At the very least, that HR/9 is inflated by a 15.4% HR/FB ratio, despite a solid 8.1% barrel rate.

Pirates continue to demoralize top prospect Thomas Harrington

Regardless, Harrington has at least strung together some solid starts as of recently. So, what do the Pirates do next? They call him back up to the Major Leagues, but in the worst possible environment ever, throwing him directly into Coors Field. Fly balls don’t just fly further in Coors; pitches are also greatly affected. Harrington’s fastball at Triple-A averaged out with about 16.5 inches of vertical break. In Coors Field, he averaged 20 inches. His cutter sat at about 27 inches of vertical movement at Indy, but 31 inches in Coors Field. 

Three to four inches of added break may not seem like a lot on paper, but that’s a huge difference when it comes to pitching. It could mean all the difference between painting the edge, or the pitch falling out of the zone, or, in the worse case, catching too much of the zone and getting nailed. Sure, the Rockies’ hitters have not been good this season, but Harrington never got a feel for his pitches, and for a very good reason, because his stuff didn’t move like it usually does. Harrington was hit hard, allowing six earned runs without making it through an entire inning of work. 

It’s not as if the Pirates were forced to call up Harrington. Even though they were short on pitching help after dealing David Bednar, Caleb Ferguson, and Bailey Falter, throwing Harrington into a pitcher’s nightmare environment when he was already torn down once was a poor choice, to say the least. Instead of Harrington, the Pirates should have given a depth pitcher a shot. Would Sean Sullivan or Drake Fellows have pitched any better? Maybe not, but Harrington is a potential building block, while neither Sullivan nor Fellows are.

While one can’t speak on Harrington’s behalf, one would also not be surprised if this affected his confidence for the worse. It seemed quite likely to have an adverse effect, from an outsider’s point of view. The Pirates handled Paul Skenes and Jared Jones well last year. But what are they doing with Harrington? They bring him up, then they send him down after less than nine innings. They bring him up again, but in an environment where a visiting pitcher is never going to get a feel for their pitches. It's yet another blunder from Ben Cherington's 2025 season (and tenure with the Pirates as a whole). The only thing to do now is hope the Pirates’ poor decision-making didn’t affect Harrington too much and that he can rebound from here.