7-8-24 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Following an offensive slugfest in Friday’s game, the bats have struggled to get traction this past weekend against the Mets. Heading into the final game of the series, they’ll have one last shot at New York via their #2 prospect (per MLB Pipeline) in Christian Scott.
A 2021 5th round pick out of Florida, Scott has made 6 starts with the Mets since his MLB debut in early May, and has posted an 0-2 record with a 4.32 ERA over 33.1 innings thus far.
Scott is a precision-over-power arm, consistently posting low walk rates and solid-to-great strikeout numbers throughout the minors with an 11.27 K/9 rate and 2.21 BB/9 rate over 191.2 minor league innings.
His pitch mix consists of throwing a mid-90s 4-seam, low-80s sweeper, high-80s slider and mid-80s splitter.
While Scott works the fastball up against both lefties and righties, he leans on running sweepers in against righties as his main secondary offering while pivoting more to the splitter down and in when facing lefties.
It’s only a small sample size in his MLB career but lefties have hit Scott much better than righties thus far, particularly outside of Citi Field as LHH have a 1.020 OPS when Scott has been the away pitcher compared to a paltry .491 OPS when he’s pitched against them in Queens.
Scott is young and still getting the growing pains of MLB. Pirates hitters should be looking for the elevated fastball. It’s his most-used pitch (52.1%) and has been effective at getting strikeouts but it’s also getting hit HARD. The average exit velocity on the pitch is 94.6 MPH and the lefty-heavy lineup today will be more than capable of hammering it off of – or likely over – the Clemente Wall in today’s matchup.
Expect strikes, hunt fastballs and find a way to get the split today.
Let’s Go Bucs!
Steel City Pirates 