Surprising Pirates pitching prospect crashes Baseball America's new metric rankings

Baseball America recently released their top 150 Stuff+ leaders, and unsurprisingly, there are a handful of Pittsburgh Pirates top pitching prospects. 2025 rookie Bubba Chandler, along with breakout hurler Antwone Kelly and hard-throwing right-hander Wilber Dotel, are among the top 150. However, one unlikely name that appears on their list is right-hander Alessandro Ercolani.

Stuff+ is a new pitching statistic that essentially measures pitch quality based on physical factors, such as release point, movement, velocity, and spin rate (per FanGraphs). It is measured on a scale such as OPS+ or wRC+ where 100 is average. Baseball America also included NStuff+ in their rankings, which is an adjusted version of Stuff+. According to BA, a slider usually grades out to a 110 per Stuff+, so NStuff+ adjusts for that. 

With that out of the way, Ercolani came in with a 113 Stuff+ mark, which led all Pirates pitchers. It was also the 36th best among all 150 pitchers on their list. He had the same Stuff+ as young Yankees standout Cam Schlittler, and slotted in ahead of the likes of the New York Mets’ Brandon Sproat and Boston Red Sox’s Payton Tolle, two top prospects who appeared at the MLB level this season.

Pirates' Alessandro Ercolani ranks among the best in Stuff+.

Ercolani’s 110 NStuff+ may not have been as good as his Stuff+, and only put him as the fourth best among Pirates prospects, but it still put him in the top 50. That places him above the previously mentioned Schlittler and another young NY Mets standout, Nolan McLean. All of this makes him an interesting player heading into the offseason for multiple reasons.

For one, his performance at Double-A Altoona wasn’t as outstanding as his Stuff+ would indicate. He had a 4.04 ERA, 4.92 FIP, and 1.23 WHIP over 100.1 innings of work. Ercolani’s strikeout rate went from 29.7% in 2024 to just 15.7% in 2025, while his walk rate rose slightly from 8% to 9%. His HR/9 also moved in the wrong direction to 1.08. This was in a very pitcher-friendly Eastern League, where the average ERA was 3.85, the average K% was 23.9%, and the average HR/9 was 0.79. The only noteworthy stat in which he wasn’t below average was BB%, which was 10.1%.

However, this was also only Ercolani’s age-21 season, and he won’t turn 22 until April 20 of next year. There were only 57 pitchers across all Double-A leagues who started at least 20 games. Ercolani started 21 games and was the second youngest, only older than San Diego Padres right-hander Victor Lizarraga. He was also the youngest pitcher in the Eastern League to make 20+ starts or pitch 100+ frames.

Another factor that makes this offseason interesting for Ercolani is his Rule 5 draft status. He will be eligible, given that the Pirates signed him out of San Marino in March 2021. The Pirates have other pitching prospects they’ll need to protect in advance of the draft, like Dotel, Kelly, and Brandan Bidois. Ercolani’s performance and age show that he’s still at least another year from the Major Leagues. However, his stuff would make him an attractive Rule 5 draft pick if the Pirates opt to leave him unprotected. Somebody could easily attempt to hide him in an MLB bullpen for the full 162.

Regardless of whether or not the Pirates opt to protect Ercolani prior to the Rule 5 draft, nobody would've expected him to be ranked so highly by this new metric. Neither MLB Pipeline nor Baseball America currently has him ranked among the Pirates’ top 30 prospects. There's a high ceiling underneat the surface for Ercolani, who might just be yet another intriguing young arm that could be ready within the next year or two in a system already chock full of them.