The Pirates’ Minor League Pitchers and Learning Control

When I was writing up my prospect lists last week, I noticed that I was writing a variation of one thing over and over again: “This guy has good control for his level,” or “For his age, his control is very advanced.” That’s what makes Nick Kingham such an interesting prospect despite not pitching in a full season yet. That’s what makes Jameson Taillon’s debut season a success, even if some of his other numbers weren’t as good as people were expecting. It’s what leaves hope for Zack Von Rosenberg and why Zack Dodson and Zac Fuesser are becoming better prospects than initially expected. 

So, I asked myself, do the Pirates’ pitching prospects really have better control than most other teams? Let’s go through and do a league-by-league look at how the Pirates’ minor league affiliates stack up in terms of control. First, the International League

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OK, so Indianapolis’ control wasn’t great this year. They also harbored quite a few guys on their roster that walked quite a few people that weren’t really prospects, but were mostly there for organizational depth. So, undeterred, I decided to dig deeper. To the Eastern League! 

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Well, hey, look at that. No one walked fewer batters in the Eastern League than the Curve, and besides the Nats’ affiliate there was a pretty big gap. On to the Florida State League. 

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No one in the FSL walked fewer batters than the Bradenton Marauders, and except for the Blue Jays’ affiliate, it wasn’t particularly close. What do you think we’ll find in the Sally League?  

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Well, hey! No one in the Sally League walked fewer batters than the West Virginia Power, and it wasn’t particularly close. This is even more impressive because the Spikes’ pitchers were a year younger, on average, than almost every other teams’ pitchers in the league. Does the trend continue to State College, home of Stetson “Ricky ‘Wild Thing’ Vaughn” Allie?   

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Generated 10/27/2011.

Not quite. But there’s a but! The Spikes’ pitchers were the second youngest in the league and they were a good bit younger than most of the other teams. And they still finished in the bottom half of the league in walks. The trend does not include the GCL Bradenton Pirates, but I’m going to brush that off because it’s practically high school at that point (the Pirates pitchers in that league were 19.5, way younger than everyone else except the Twins). 

So the Pirates’ minor league pitchers, particularly the ones drafted by Neal Hutington and raised mostly on the Kyle Stark/Jim Benedict program, have excellent control. The young ones, in particular, have excellent control. You can see from the lists, though, that they don’t strike out a whole heck of a lot of batters, though. Altoona, Bradenton, and State College were last in their respective leagues in strikeouts by pretty wide margins and West Virginia was 11th of 14. 

You can teach control. The Pirates are doing it. That leaves a bit of hope for a guy like Steston Allie, I think. The question, though, is once you teach a pitcher control through the rather extreme methods that the Pirates use (how many other teams limit young pitchers’ arsenals the way the Pirates do? I’d bet it’s not many), can they go back and re-learn how to miss bats, as well? Control is obviously important, but it’s also not the only important thing that young pitchers need to learn.