Analyzing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Top Prospects in Spring Training (Part 1: Pitchers)
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been in a dry spell for a good amount of time. They last made the playoffs in 2015, and since then have only won 43.8% of their games. Currently, they sit atop the NL Central with a perfect 5–0 record in 2024. If the Pirates want to translate this start into success and keep it going long term, it is pivotal for the small market to bolster their farm system. Right now, MLB.com ranks the Pirates farm system 9th in the league, posessing 6 of MLB’s top 100 prospects.
What I’m going to do here is look at each prospect from 2024 major league spring training (who played in a park with Statcast tracking) and analyze their data in a way to show what they’re good at, and how they can improve. The in-game statistics are not the focal point of this analysis, as they are such small sample sizes from players who are obviously not with their best form. I’ll be looking heavily at their metrics to see their room for improvement.
To do this project, I built and used a Shiny App which can be downloaded here.
Braxton Ashcraft
Ashcraft is a 24 year old RHP and Pittsburg’s #7 ranked prospect. After an impressive AA debut in 2023, he showed great stuff in spring training.
These are his percentiles for the spring, where most players are already major leaguers. His fastball averaged 97 mph with an also above average 2330 RPM of spin. He was able to generate weak contact on the ground, but struggled with walks. His expected stats on batting average and weighted on base average (or WOBA) were better than the actual performance, which is an encouraging sign given his expected stats are in the 77th and 78th percentiles.
Ashcraft’s slider has potential, with an above average spin rate of 2500 mph, an optimal 8% spin efficiency, and an optimal 28 Bauer Units (Spin RPM / Velo MPH). His slider is more of the gyro variety, which has barely any break. It also is released the exact same as his fastball making it much harder to differentiate the two.
The slider was swung on heavy with two strikes during the spring, but only one whiff which was high in the zone.
His curveball plays excellent off his fastball by mirroring the break direction, being thrown around an optimal 16mph less than the fastball, and holding an ideal 68% spin efficiency.
On Ashcraft’s fastball, he has high velocity and high spin, meaning he should try to place it in the upper third of the strike zone, but the majority of the pitches were below that mark. Though these fastballs did not perform the best for him in spring training, it’s a very small sample size on big league hitters, and his high command of this pitch will pay off.
Ashcraft painted his curveball on the outside corner with two strikes but only once did he throw it below the zone which he should consider doing more to better match the throwing angle of his curve to that of his fastball. This might explain why he did not get any whiffs on the curve all spring. He should also try to throw the curve 1–2 mph faster to bring his Bauer Unit down to below 30, which works best in MLB.
Kyle Nicolas
Nicolas is a 25 year old RHP and the Pirates’ #21 prospect. His arsenal is bascially fastball/slider with some experimentation with the curveball. In 2023 he made his MLB debut with the Pirates but in 5.1 innings gave up 7 earned runs. He also seemed to struggle in the minors before that debut.
Like Ashcraft, Nicolas has a hard thrown fastball that spins fast and generates weak contact onto the ground. And like Ashcraft, his expected stats were better in the spring than his actual results. His fastball should be thrown above the upper third line in the strike zone, but is only done so just over half the time (27/48 pitches). All of his whiffs on the fastball came in the upper third of the zone.
His slider is very much a cut slider, with not much break. It makes for a great “glue” pitch between his fastball and curveball by being thrown at an in-between throwing angle so the batter is not as easily tipped off.
The ideal slider is thrown 8–10 mph slower than the fastball, and his lies at 90 while the fastball is 96. He should aim to lower it to 88 which also puts it in the ideal Bauer Unit slot of 28–30 and allows him to focus on better commanding the pitch as it was thrown highly in the zone with also high rates of being very far off the plate. His Whiff rate was 60% below the lower third of the zone.
He threw 8 curveballs, which mirrored his fastball perfectly in terms of break, and has a good spin/velo combination pairing off the fastball. It has above average vertical break and thus should be thrown low, but he struggled to command it as 4 of the 8 pitches were thrown high or middle. However his spin efficiency is only 44% when it works best around 65–85% making this pitch a long term project for him, but a pitch he should continue to develop.
