Something to look forward to: the pitching in the Pirates system

Although the pitching is still a ways a way from the majors, it’s nice to see there are great arms on their way.

The Pirates pitching was ranked 10th (full-season affilates) among major league baseball’s systems at 4.18

Class-A Bradenton 3.64 ERA among the starters was 15th lowest and Double-A Altoona’s 3.66 ERA was the 18th lowest.

“Pitching is a game of attrition, and our philosophy is that you need a lot of it,” director of player development Kyle Stark said. “That’s starting to play out here.”

 

The four young arms in Double-A Altoona are not expected to start the 2011 season in the majors, but that doesn’t mean a few of them won’t be called-up later in the season.

Rudy Owens is a 22-year-old left-handed starter in Altoona. He finished the season 12-6 with a 2.46 ERA through 26 starts. His walk/strikeout ratio is 23/132.

“Every time we’ve challenged Rudy, he responded,” Stark said. “Just in the past month, we’ve limited his innings to five or six, Rudy gets mad, so he goes and shuts everyone out.”

 

Bryan Morris went 9-4 with a 3.03 ERA for Double-A Altoona this season.  His walk/strikeout ratio is 38/134.

Justin Wilson went 11-8 with a 3.09 ERA for Double-A Altoona this season. He was also the winner for the final game in the 2008 College World Series.

Jeff Locke –who was promoted to Double-A half way through the season– went 12-5 with a 3.56 ERA comined with both Altoona and Bradenton.

“It meant a lot to me to have good pitching around me because it pushed me to do my best each time out,” Owens said. “It’s just competitive nature that made us all want to try to one-up the other guy.”

 

Daniel Moskos and Tim Alderson both had rough seasons in the minors.

Moskos boasted a 1.52 ERA as the Altoona Curve’s closer, picking up 27 saves. After being promoted to Triple-A Indy in June things went sour as his ERA jumped to 10.38 and had a .351 opponent batting average. He was demoted back to Double-A.

Alderson was demoted from Double-A Altoona to High-A Bradenton after a rough season as well. He finished the season a combined 11-9 with 6.03 ERA.

“Those are the two that stand out for us,” Stark said. “But I’ll say this: If you’re talking about Moskos in Double-A, people would be raving. He didn’t make the mental adjustment to Triple-A, and that’s on us. He thought he had to do more, and he didn’t. With Alderson, we inherited a foundation we didn’t think would translate for the long term and initially left him alone, but now we’re working through some new things. He’s gotten better, and he’s starting to smile again.”

 

Some more promising arms:

Nathan Baker combined with Class-A West Virgina and High-A Bradenton was 8-8 with a 3.00 ERA.

Aaron Pribanic was 7-6 with a 3.33 ERA with High-A Bradenton.

Nathan Adcock was 11-7 with a 3.38 ERA with High-A Bradenton. His walk/strikeout ratio was 38/113.

Brian Leach was 9-9 with a 3.85 ERA with High-A Bradenton.

 

“Our focus is on helping every individual, not worry about who’s regarded as a prospect and who’s not,” Stark said. “That’s how you get players like these to surprise you.”

 

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