North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: Examining the Pirates' new pitching prospects

CINCINNATI -- And now the pitchers.

In case you missed the previous two entries in this prospect evaluation series, here is the book on the players the Pirates got in the Adam Frazier trade and the hitting prospects they got in their other deadline deals.

That leaves just the pitchers. While the Pirates didn’t get that coveted top 100 prospect, they did emerge with four pitchers, including three that we’ll be looking at in this article. They are a sinkerballer who has seen a new pitch emerge, an 18-year-old Panamanian project and a former top 100 guy who has lost some shine, but still has potential. 

Let’s get started:

RHP RICKY DEVITO

The Pirates got two right-handers in their buzzer beat trade that sent Richard Rodríguez to the Braves minutes before the deadline. Of that duo, Bryse Wilson was the one that jumped off the page. He is major league ready, has a playoff quality start under his belt and was a top 100 prospect as recently as 2019. His trajectory was a little down after some initial struggles in the majors, but he’s still the headliner.

DeVito’s stock, on the other hand, is on the rise. The 22-year-old (he’ll turn 23 later this month) was set to be ranked as the Braves’ No. 17 prospect in Baseball America’s midseason update. He’s sidelined right now with an elbow injury and has made just five appearances all year, but they were five strong starts, posting a 2.66 ERA and 27 strikeouts over 20 1/3 innings.

Selected in the eighth round in 2019, the book on DeVito was he had a sinker that could probably be major league average but needed a true out pitch to support it. It looks like he’s found that out pitch in a split-change that has some bite down:

A sinker that sits in the low- to mid-90s isn’t going to get a ton of whiffs, so this is his main put away pitch. He also has a curveball, but it’s a clear third offering and will need to get sharper for it to play in the upper levels of the system.

DeVito isn’t a high spin guy. He’s a sinking movement, mess with timing guy. When he does that, he’s shown that he can ground balls and strikeouts. Will that pitch repertoire still get whiffs as he reaches Class AAA or the majors? It’s a good question. There are good tools for him to be a ground ball specialist at least. 

There are some control controls, especially for when he gets down in the dirt, firing four wild pitches this year and eight as a junior at Seton Hill in 2019 over 12 starts. Yes, you can put some of the onus on his catchers for not blocking pitches in the dirt, but DeVito’s pitches are going to be low. He needs to command that lower third because his whiffs are going to mostly come from below the knees. If he can’t command that, or if he let’s too many base runners move up for free, it will be a problem.

DeVito has been used as a starter in pro ball, but probably has a better future out of the bullpen. Lean on the sinker and splitter and try to become a ground ball specialist. There is a chance he could be a fifth starter or swingman if the curveball tightens up, but it’s hard to imagine him leapfrogging enough pitchers on the Pirates’ minor-league depth chart for that to happen.

Out of the bullpen, that sinker would probably gain a few ticks and he could rely on the splitter as his main secondary pitch with a curve to support it. David Bednar does the same with a four-seam fastball.

RHP JOAQUIN TEJADA

I’m going to preface this entry with two points. The first is I could not find any recent video of Tejada. He’s only had three appearances in the Dominican Summer League (DSL), so that’s hard to come by. To my knowledge, this Baseball America article from 2019 has the most recent public video on him. He’s been working on his mechanics since then, so that’s a starting point, not necessarily an indicator of where he is now.

The second point that I have to stress is that Tejada is an 18-year-old DSL lottery ticket and was the clear second player in the Tyler Anderson trade. He is, in the very best case scenario, years away from being on the major league radar. Like most teenagers in the international market, you’re signing up for a very raw ball player, and a large chunk of these players never even make it stateside. 

With all that said, after getting a report on Tejada, I can see why the Pirates like him. They tried to get him as a international free agent two years ago – he ended up signing for $200,000 with the Mariners instead – and the Pirates kept tabs on him since. 

Tejada primarily operates with a four-seam, curveball mix. When he signed, his heater was sitting around 88 mph. He’s added some velo since then and is now consistently hitting the low-90s. There’s still room to add a few more ticks, too, depending on how he cleans up his mechanics and grows into his 6-foot-1 frame. If both happen, then mid-90s heat is a possibility.

The curveball is the big pitch, though. It can get about 2,800-3,000 RPM of spin with lateral movement. That would put him in the highest epsilon of major league pitchers in terms of curveball spin. Of course there is more to a pitch than just spin rate, but it moves and can potentially tunnel off the fastball. That is a good foundation to build off.

He also has a changeup with some sink, but it’s not at the same level as his improving fastball or the curveball. The lower levels are filled with “stuff” guys, and the DSL is the bottom, bottom rung in pro ball. But "stuff" wise, it’s at least comparable to anyone else in that league, if not some of the best available there. 

Tejada is a longshot bet, but there are some tools to work with. I couldn’t get a feel for if the Pirates view him as a potential starter or reliever (and it's probably way too soon to know), but I could see the latter working out well if those two pitches continue to develop. He’s a good guy to have at the DSL right now, and I’d say the odds are good that he at least makes it stateside, where anything can happen. 

RHP BRYSE WILSON

Pirate fans have already been introduced to Wilson, who tossed five innings of two-hit ball against the Brewers on Monday. If you watched that start, you have a good gist of what Wilson can do. He pitches off his four-seam and two-seam fastballs – he can throw them each in the four quadrants of the zone, giving him eight different fastball looks – to set up changeups to his hand side or breaking pitches that fall out of the zone. 

Wilson has a five-pitch mix, but interestingly didn’t throw a slider in his first start with the Pirates, opting for just curveballs. That pitch mix was very fastball aggressive though, so there might not be anything to read into there.

He is, at his core, a strike thrower. He isn’t going to beat himself by issuing free passes or getting too deep into counts. The hitter is going to have to earn it, but Wilson has a tendency to hang pitches:

Those are all of the big league hits Wilson has allowed in his 81 ⅓ innings in the majors. This is spread out over small parts of four seasons, but normally, that's about half a season’s worth of pitching. Almost all of those hits allowed were center-cut. When he locates his pitches up or to his hand side, he tends to get good results. If he misses, he pays for it.

Wilson is kind of in the same boat as Mitch Keller, to draw a parallel to a current player: A top 100 prospect in 2019 (Baseball America had him at No. 80) who has not really clicked in the majors. While the Pirates have hung on to Keller, the Braves were willing to let Wilson go, even though he’s only 23. There is a lot of unexplored upside, but his career trajectory was definitely headed in the wrong direction with the Braves. Maybe he just needs a fresh start. Maybe he just needs a consistent opportunity. 

Maybe he doesn’t pan out. This is his last option year, so the Pirates won’t have the luxury of optioning him to the minors like they did with Keller this year if things go wrong in 2022. It’s time for him to take a step or he could very well lose his opportunity to start.

I think there’s a decent chance Wilson can still be a good No. 3 or 4 starter. He challenges hitters with above average stuff in the zone. It’s going to come down to if he can cut down on the meatballs. If he does that, then he should start. If he doesn’t, then maybe middle relief is the way to go.