Everyone’s Story is Different, but Quinn Priester and Mitch Keller Sure Stack Up Side by Side

2-2-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

Happy Groundhog’s Day everyone, in honor of the day I thought it would be as good a time as any to really dig in on an issue at the very least fans sure as hell feel is recurring year after year in Pittsburgh.

Why can’t this team just develop some pitching?

Then the team that famously can’t develop pitching goes ahead and drafts a stud starter with the first pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, and almost as immediately came the assumption that they’d find a way to screw him up. Paul Skenes having not seen his national rankings fall just by being associated with the Pirates for over six months was almost a shock to be honest.

Quinn Priester a huge bust, lost his fastball! Luis Ortiz was great and then they “taught” him, now he stinks. Roansy was elite, now he looks on the verge of tears on the mound.

Fans are quick to declare careers over long before they are, especially at a position that requires the kind of patience pitching does. Today, I just want to recount the story of Mitch Keller’s rise to where he is, and as Quinn Priester’s story starts to creep in and overlap, well, I haven’t written it yet, let’s see where it goes.

2018

I don’t have to go back all that far to show you what a whole lot of you, myself included, had to say about Mitch Keller. Experts said the same, lots of them. If you believed in him at all, you probably clung to the stuff being good, and deflected to some mental hang up or even lacking courage to a degree.

Truth be told, Mitch took a solid year longer than a player is typically going to get, arguably longer. The better the team the prospect is trying to crack, the shorter that leash is going to be. Mitch walked in to a desert. Meaning, there was Mitch, Nick Kingham and an oft injured JT Brubaker when you talk about prospects even conceivable of helping back in 2018. That said, nobody was crying for Mitch to get here, he was the top pitching prospect in baseball and this team wasn’t in a position to have to force him to MLB, believe it or not.

I don’t need to tell you how deep the team thought they were here, they made a rather large trade right here to acquire a starter and toss two back in return. It’s a whole thing, maybe you heard of it.

2019

The Rotation had some promise, at least guys who had some success. Jameson Taillon started that season at least and was coming off his best season as a Pirate shoving 191 innings and looking like the Ace who had battled back from UCL and Testicular Cancer to finally claim his perch, unfortunately he only lasted into August before being shut down for the season and underwent UCL again.

Joe Musgrove was promising, but young and inconsistent. Trevor Williams had himself a 2018, and we spent most of 2019 hoping to see it again. Jordan Lyles was Jordan Lyles. Steven Brault held down the only lefty spot admirably. Chris Archer earned his eventual no vote on picking up his option. Dario Agrazal started 14 times for the club.

Point being, they were learning quickly, what looked promising, had quickly become Joe Musgrove and uh oh.

Mitch Keller laid down some pretty awful numbers in 2019 for the Pirates, but he became desperately needed given everything else I outlined up there. A 7.13 ERA in 11 starts only going 48 innings. Finished stronger than he started though, and did have an impressive 65 strike outs vs 16 walks.

Kingham on the other hand, only 4 starts, a 9.87 ERA and his K’s to BB’s looked more like 32/17.

Remember trying to convince yourself there might be something there with Parker Markel? LOL, I do.

Keller earned another shot out of desperation, and bluntly, being the most highly touted out of the group. His stuff gave him enough thunder in the K department to think it reasonable to keep molding that clay. Plus, here was a team that suddenly needed pitching like crazy after entering that very year thinking they might just have enough to keep the train rolling.

Almost as an homage to how this season went on the mound the Pirates selected Quinn Priester out of Cary-Grove High school in Cary Illinois. A high schooler with a big arm, seen as a raw talent with a penchant for self teaching, his frame sold him more than his young repertoire. He’d throw in nine games for the Gulf Coast Pirates and the West Virginia Power RIP, only amassing 36.2 innings.

2020

2020 was a joke for MLB. It stunted prospects, it stunted the growth of players in MLB, and it stretched out the story that is Mitch Keller, even as it starts to tell the story of Quinn Priester.

Those 36.2 innings of minor league, welcome to the league lets see what you got kid innings would be his last professional innings pitched until 2021. Instead, Quinn was invited to the COVID created “training hub” in Altoona.

With no minor league baseball to watch prospect sites were hungry for good reports from some of these training hubs. Quinn was a rather surprise addition to the Pirates 60-man roster. That site was intended to be a pool of players who could come up rather quickly to replace players who might need to be quarantined.

This all sounds like a bad dream even as I sit here remembering it.

He had been working out on his own and showed the club he could hit 98 MPH on the gun, which hadn’t been in his wheelhouse. Of course, he flew up the prospect ranking boards, largely based on lack of news and some glowing reports. In fact, it’s almost as if it were more draft style ranking as opposed to post draft. Point is, he was the hotness.

Back to our hero Mitch for a moment.

The Pirates entered 2020 planning to use Mitch, help him build off of the very short success strip he laid down in 2019 but Left oblique discomfort would derail him for most of what was already a disgracefully short season. He’d only throw 21.2 innings in 5 starts with a 2.91 ERA. Weird for Mitch though, he walked 18 batters and only struck out 16. He’d been successful in outcome, but that simply wasn’t the Mitch they expected to see. Still, there are a lot of fans and sadly media members who see that 2.91 ERA and up go the expectations heading into 2021.

2021

The team officially entered rebuild territory here. Oh, it had been coming of course after the Starling Marte deal, but now we were about to begin to understand how far they’d go, who was safe, who were they considering worth keeping vs trading or just moving on from in general.

I won’t go into all of it, but Joe Musgrove was by far their best starter and they moved him, Jameson Taillon was coming back from UCL and they chose to not have Pittsburgh be where he’d see if it took this time.

The Rotation was decimated.

Mitch Keller was now no longer optional, he had to work.

Chad Kuhl was returning from UCL himself, JT Brubaker had survived attrition and started making it look like he deserved a look. Wil Crowe, newly acquired for Josh Bell was handed a spot, and veterans Trevor Cahill and Tyler Anderson were brought in as the duct tape to hold these toothpicks and playing cards together.

They lost a lot, they were intended to.

But one pitcher in the bunch was supposed to be showing everyone he was going to survive this rebuild as an answer, Keller.

There’s no way to be kind here, Keller was awful for the vast majority of 2021. While the team didn’t plan to compete, they certainly didn’t think Mitch would seemingly backslide so much. The K/BB improved a bit with 92/49 but he got taken to the woodshed on fatties all season. Eventually prompting the pitching starved Pirates to send him to AAA in an effort to help him get his mojo back, which made me think at the time, what mojo?

He embraced a 2 seamer and finished the season looking like a different pitcher. Not perfect, but again it was easy to see him as a guy you had to see more from in 2022, again looking at a fairly non-existent rotation.

Brubaker was arguably more promising in 2021 than Mitch Keller. Take that as you will.

Still the Pirates waited for a prospect to emerge. And I mean one that anyone expected to actually help, not a lucky overachieving AAA 29 year old.

Quinn was still at the top of everyone’s lips, but not particularly close to MLB. This frustrated a lot of folks who took those increased ratings and rankings as gospel and held him to them.

Priester spent his entire 2021 in Greensboro, a notoriously hitter friendly venue. Started 20 games throwing 97.2 innings. 98/39 K’s to BB’s and in general, the stuff played. The fastball was 95-96, had some life, but it hardly mattered, nobody could touch his breaking stuff. onward and upward right?

A Young Roansy Contreras makes a cameo start at the end of the season.

2022

Whirlwind of a season for Quinn, he’d pitch in 4 different levels if you count rehab assignments from Bradenton on through Indianapolis for a cup of coffee. A lot of movement, not a lot of progress though, in fact his innings count fell by 7 innings to 90.1 and the fastball was still not being asked for. Meaning, he was still doing quite well only showing it on occasion and at that had become rather comfortable with just 93-94 with the pitch. His breaking stuff is plenty good to still be a success in the minors like that, but to succeed at the big league level, you tend to need to be able to challenge with and place the fastball.

Not his fault, he simply hadn’t been forced to cut his mix down and learn to win with his heater. Bookmark this, because when we tell the story of 2023, you’ll need to have this in your back pocket.

Back to Mitch.

He entered with some expectation he’d take a step, but nobody was truly sure how it’d go. JT Brubaker was going to be given a shot to build on what he had done.

The Pirates brought in Jose Quintana, traded for Zach Thompson, and gave Bryse Wilson who they had acquired at the past deadline a shot to start.

Wil Crowe was already ruled out and relegated to the pen.

Mitch stepped up after a temporary move to the bullpen, he came back fully bought in on what was being preached, backed by some independent training he had worked with over the offseason, he’d found another gear in velocity. Now if anything, he needed to learn how to make all the nasty work together.

The pressure for guys like Quinn and Roansy was building, and while being severely restricted on innings the Pirates let Roansy start. He’d cement himself almost instantly as a member of the rotation and shined a bright light on how long it had taken Keller to reach what still looked a bit too shaky at times he had gotten to.

Luis Ortiz came up and made us think we had accidentally discovered gold and Johan Oviedo showed some promise.

2023

Still a shaky rotation. Mitch Keller would now be asked to lead it, even being asked to be the Opening Day hurler.

Rich Hill and Vince Velazquez were brought in as veteran help. Brubaker was going to be there, looking serviceable as ever. Hey, we got Roansy and Ortiz and this Oviedo kid, well he can start in AAA.

Then what happened?

Yeah, last year happened. Brubaker out, Vince out, Hill traded, Ortiz struggled, Roansy disappeared. Oviedo didn’t happen to last year, he’s the Brubaker story heading into 2024 instead.

Point is, the lessons the Pirates finally got around to trying to teach Quinn about the fastball, well, let’s just say they were moved to the MLB blackboard instead. After an above average 22 games in Indianapolis in which they had just started to work on some fine tuning, he was forced into action by attrition, lack of depth and if I may be so frank, the GM’s negligence in not acquiring some help at the deadline maybe even someone who would have already been here in 2024 as well, but I digress.

Quinn gave the Bucs 10 starts, threw 158 innings between the two levels, 50 in the Bigs. An ERA of 7.74 in 10 games.

Remember this from Mitch’s debut season from earlier?

Mitch Keller laid down some pretty awful numbers in 2019 for the Pirates, but he became desperately needed given everything else I outlined up there. A 7.13 ERA in 11 starts only going 48 innings. Finished stronger than he started though, and did have an impressive 65 strike outs vs 16 walks.

Eerily similar, right down the the very problem. Not being comfortable enough to rely on the fastball, and too many years of crushing the competition without it.

What Have We Learned?

These journeys are not the same, and they aren’t meant to predict Quinn Priester will become Mitch Keller. I can say, the majority of Mitch’s development into what he is today happened under this management team and while it wasn’t as fast as you typically need it to be, it did take.

I’d also say, it’s alarming looking back through this and seeing regardless of reason up to and including injury, Mitch Keller is the only pitcher you can point to and say, boom, we did that.

Quinn will enter this season with an opportunity. Maybe it’s not to go North out of camp, but it will likely be another chance to take a step in the Bigs. He’s adjusting his delivery, paring his pitches, shaping his breaking stuff and looking to be better this time.

Every guy does. These stories aren’t unique, but this also isn’t the same system Mitch Keller was trying to climb out of in 2019. This system is filled especially near the top with high end talent that will pressure Quinn Priester and the others I named for that matter, more than Mitch saw in his entire Pirates career.

For some guys, that pressure cracks them, for others, it makes a diamond. One thing is for sure, it’s better as a baseball franchise to have this scenario, even if it did provide a long enough runway for Keller to finally land the plane.

My advice, don’t make decisions about whether a young pitcher is good or not until the absolute second you have to. It’s just too hard to accumulate meaningful arms to start passing over everyone who struggles at the Big League level their first go around. It’s a tight rope walk as you enter a phase where you feel you have enough hitting to win, because patience is shorter when you have options and no room for error.

We’ll enter this year feeling like Priester, Roansy, and Ortiz are all longshots to do anything here, and we’ll do it based on remembering their failures, minimizing or forgetting their successes, dismissing all together their experience levels and all the while we’ll call Mitch Keller a can’t miss extension. Many of us completely ignorant as to the irony.

There’s only one real way to develop pitching and it’s a lot like eating your broccoli, plug your nose, cover it with cheese and hope cooking it a little longer will make it good.