Pittsburgh Pirates Draft: Five College Pitchers To Keep An Eye On

Lucas Gordon

Lucas Gordon is a left-handed pitcher from the University of Texas. After piecing together a quality 2022 season, Gordon has produced a second straight good campaign for the Longhorns. While Gordon is far from the most popular player in this year’s draft, I think there’s enough to like about him to warrant him being on your radar.

In 95 innings, Gordon has a 2.45 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 3.38 K:BB ratio. Gordon typically isn’t an overpowering-type pitcher, but he produced a 25.1% strikeout rate last season. He also had a quality 7.4% walk rate. His strikeout rate was an uptick by 3.9%, while his walk rate was relatively the same and only a small 0.3% increase from 2022. The only major change was in HR/9, which went from 0.21 to 0.76 this year.

Gordon’s development of a third pitch will be crucial for his long-term development. He’s primarily a fastball/change-up guy right now. He typically sits in the low-90s in the 90-92 range. His change-up has tumbling action, and both pitches project as average to above average. But his breaking ball has below-average traits. According to Joe Doyel of Future Star Series, the biggest thing he needs to work on is getting a better feel for spin for his breaking pitch.

Gordon is the typical lefty with pitchability. However, I like how well he’s done the last two seasons, and he’s a solid breaking ball away from having three reliable offerings. Gordon would definitely be on my post-round-five radar going into this year’s draft as a super-sleeper pick.