This Pirates reliever could be their 2025 diamond in the rough

The Pittsburgh Pirates regularly find pitchers on the waiver wire (and are typically justifiably criticized for their propensity for this behavior). But sometimes, the Bucs find some decent arms during the process. Over the last two seasons, they’ve seen the likes of Ryan Borucki and Dennis Santana go from depth relievers to high-leverage hurlers because of how well they’ve pitched since joining the Pirates. This year, that pitcher could be southpaw Joey Wentz.

Wentz joined the Pirates at the start of September of last season after they claimed him from the Detroit Tigers. He only pitched in a dozen innings, but only allowed two earned runs, both of which came during his first outing in black and gold. Wentz walked six batters but struck out 13. Overall, Wentz ended the 2024 campaign on a high note. He had a 2.42 ERA, 24.7% K%, and a 9% walk rate. His barrel percentage was only 1.7%, leading to him allowing zero home runs through his final two months of the year.

Wentz is off to a strong start to the 2025 season. He has only tossed 6.1 innings, but has struck out five opponents. He’s allowed four free passes, but two of those were intentional walks. It’s obviously a small sample size, and he’s yet to throw even a game’s worth of innings yet, but there are some promising signs to the start of his year.

Pirates reliever Joey Wentz displaying positive signs to start 2025

The velocity on all of Wentz’s pitches is all up. He is sitting at 94.1 MPH with his fastball, compared to 93.7 MPH last year. His cutter is also up to 88 MPH, around two MPH higher from 2024. His curveball has also gone from 79.3 MPH to 81.6 MPH. However, he has had to sacrifice movement for velocity.

One thing that is making his stuff play up is his extension off the mound. Wentz has changed up his release point. Last season, he was only in the 49th percentile of extension at 6.5 feet. This year, he is now at 6.8 feet. On paper, that may look like a small change, but it makes his velocity deceptive. At only 6.5 feet, his four-seam fastball, which averaged out at 93.7 MPH, only looked like 93.8 MPH to an opposing batter. Now, it adds an entire tick of velo to his stuff, so his 94 MPH fastball looks more like a 95 MPH heater.

But how do we know that this isn’t a small sample size fluke? We’ve seen other lefty relievers in recent years, like Dillon Peters and Josh Fleming, start the year off hot before falling apart in May and June. The main difference is Wentz has decent stuff to back up his performance. Peters and Fleming both sat around 90 in terms of Stuff+. This is a stat on a similar scale as other stats with a ‘+’, like wRC+ or OPS+, where 100 is average. Wentz is sitting around 100, a huge step up from both Peters and Fleming. Even last year with the Tigers and Pirates, Stuff+ pinned him at a 99.

We shall see how Wentz continues to perform, but he has more in common with pitchers the Pirates have turned around, like Borucki and Santana, than Peters or Fleming. If he can be the Pirates’ next big bullpen project that pans out, their 'pen depth chart will look a lot better, especially considering Wentz won’t hit arbitration until this offseason.