Consistency has Heredia’s future with Pittsburgh Pirates in doubt

Consistency problems have left Luis Heredia’s future with the Pittsburgh Pirates in jeopardy.

When he signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates as a 16-year-old out of Mexico for $2.6 million, Luis Heredia was one of the most highly touted prospects to emerge south of the border. Moments of brilliance kept the Pirates from giving up on the prospect turned project, but after a tremendous start to the season, consistency problem once again put his future with the Pirates in jeopardy.

Control and conditioning problems have been key factors in the demise of Heredia’s once promising future in baseball. When he was just a couple years older than the little league players who descend on Williamsport, PA every year, Heredia was throwing in the low-90s, roughly 10 mph faster than the best players his age. At 6’5”, he had the type of frame scouts look for in a frontline starter, with the exception of one glaring flaw.

Heredia repeatedly showed up to spring training overweight and out of shape. Multiple times, he’s been held back from starting spring training workouts on time in order to get caught up with the conditioning regiment outlined by the Pirates’ organization.

After an impressive sophomore season with the State College Spikes, he followed up with a 3.05 ERA in 14 games with the West Virginia Power in 2013. After repeating the level in 2014, Heredia’s days as a starter ended after a 5.44 ERA in 21 starts with the Bradenton Marauders the following year.

This season, he repeated a level once again using his two-seam fastball to devastating effect, but after a great start to the season, Heredia allowed twice as many walks in August as strikeouts (8/4) in 10.1 innings. He also allowed at least one run in seven of the 10 outings last month.

Heredia has found success keeping the ball in the ballpark with the new approach, allowing just one home run in 53.0 innings this season, but he needs to show greater control to keep hope alive that he may someday return some of the investment.

Heredia is eligible for the Rule 5 draft this year. He is all but certain to not be selected during the MLB portion of the draft. He is unlikely to be selected at all since the production Heredia can give is so easy to find in minor league free agency, even if his potential is hard to match.

More likely, Heredia has just one year on his minor league uniform player contract, which means he will be a minor league free agent after next season. Heredia will need to prove his performance during the first half of 2016 can be repeated out of the bullpen at Altoona for a full season, or he could quickly become just another tally on the stats sheet of promising players who failed and were forced to find something else to do with their life.

Photo credit to Dailyrecord.com