North Shore Nine

Baseball America published an in-depth piece today highlighting how each team has performed since 2012 in regards to drafting and developing pitching.

As followers of the team, we likely expected this to look a bit rough, but I’m not sure I was ready for THIS rough.

Now, I don’t claim to be the smartest person, but there’s a couple things from this chart I can pick up and know right away that it’s bad. First, the Pirates logo is in the bottom left. That’s not where good stuff tends to happen. And second, they are very close to the Oakland A’s, and that is a logo you don’t want to be near when it comes to anything, really.

Read the article, but it points to the lack or slowness of development from the likes of Quinn Priester and Mitch Keller along with the injury issues of Shane Baz playing a large role in this.

Pirates draft picks during this time period have a MLB worst 5.03 ERA and have accumulated the 5th least amount of innings. They also rank dead last in FIP.

You can surely point to the subject of this study as a big reason, if not the main reason why the Pirates have struggled over the last half decade. Here’s hoping that “Top 5 Spending in Player Development” can fix this or else we’re in for a longer draught.