Jonah Keri has a nice piece up at Grantland today that looks at two things that have more or less intersected for Pirate fans this winter: Edwin Jackson and pitching prospects. I strongly recommend a full read, but the basic idea of it is that Jackson was once a very highly touted pitching prospect and now he’s just a guy that’s pretty OK, but that that’s a pretty good result for a highly-touted pitching prospect.
This all relates back to the Pirates in a couple ways. One is that it reinforces that nasty sinking feeling that building your minor league system almost exclusively around pitching prospects* is the same thing as building a giant sand castle half-way up the beach with absolutely no idea how far high-tide will be coming in. The other is that it’s a reminder that it’s worth waiting another year to see how Kyle Stark’s “fastball command emphasis” plan is really going to pan out. I know that sometimes we as fans all grumble about the focus the Pirates put on fastballs in the low minors and when we see bad performances stack up we wonder if the Pirates’ occasionally-extreme regiment is hurting their prospects more than helping them, but it’s worth remembering that it’d be hard to be worse than the status quo when it comes to developing big league pitchers. The Pirates are trying something different to keep their young arms healthy and help them develop and it’s worth seeing it through, because no one really has any idea exactly what’s necessary to make those things happen.
* And yes, I know, the Pirates have some decent non-pitching prospects, too. But let’s play this game: try to imagine the Pirates winning something significant in 2014 without Starling Marte, and then try again without Gerrit Cole. The pitching is the main feature here.
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