2/1/25 – Ethan S. Smith – @mvp_EtHaN/@LockedOnPirates
The 2025 campaign will see tons of returns for the Pittsburgh Pirates, with a slew of 40-man roster players returning from season-ending injuries last year, and one of the biggest returns come in Johan Oviedo.
Oviedo, 27 in March, is hopeful to return to the starting rotation this season after missing all of 2024 with Tommy John surgery, and its unfortunate that Oviedo didn’t get the opportunity to build on his 2023 season, a season which saw him toss 177.1 innings with a 4.31 ERA across 32 starts, having been the first time that Oviedo surpassed 100 innings and 20 starts in his career.
The right-hander even had a pretty good stint following his arrival to Pittsburgh via the Jose Quintana trade with St. Louis in 2022, posting a 3.23 ERA in seven starts with the Pirates.
Between the last time Oviedo threw a pitch on a big league mound and present day, the landscape of the starting rotation has drastically changed with the insertion of Paul Skenes, Jared Jones and the potential emergences of Bubba Chandler, Braxton Ashcraft and Mike Burrows. Oviedo threw the second most innings for a Pirates pitcher in ’23, trailing just Mitch Keller, while Rich Hill, Luis Ortiz and Roansy Contreras, who are all no longer with the club, threw 68 or more innings, so its safe to say the rotation is in a much better spot than when Oviedo was last seen.
So, what made Oviedo so successful as a starter for the Pirates prior to the injury? It is very hard not the start with his breaking pitches, which valued at +18 via StatCast two years ago, ranking in the 98th percentile. A ton of the value came from Oviedo’s curveball, which he threw 15-percent of the time alongside his primary fastball and slider, and the curveball surrendered just a .193 opponent’s batting average, while the slider saw a .210 opponent’s batting average, so Oviedo’s usage of his secondary pitches was a major bright spot.
His fastball did get beat up quite a bit though, allowing a .278 xBA and .477 slugging and being below average in ground ball rate at 40.7-percent(league average was 44.4-percent in 2023), so Oviedo will have a tall task to improve the numbers on his fastball to better compliment his strong secondary offerings.
Oviedo did grade out pretty fairly on his advanced statistics on StatCast rather well no, ranking highly in extension(93rd percentile), fastball velocity(80th percentile), barrel rate(54th percentile) and average exit velocity(58th percentile), so the numbers across the board suggest that Oviedo was just a flat out solid starter for Pittsburgh.
Now, the biggest question mark is what Oviedo looks like post-Tommy John, as many pitchers across baseball experience drops in production following the injury, an injury that has plagued many careers across MLB.
2023 was rather impressive because, going back to those 32 starts, Oviedo ranked top-10 in baseball in starts, so his durability was not much of a question then, but may be now, but if Oviedo can remain mostly healthy, he could add to a rotation that already appears to be the strength of this Pirates roster heading into 2025 as a back-end rotational piece.
Oviedo will have others gunning for positioning for the final rotation spot, but he does have a leg up against his competitors because of his 2022 and 2023 sample as a starter. If Oviedo can improve his strikeout-to-walk rate(1.90 in 2023) and make his fastball a more useful primary pitch, he should have zero issue finding work in the back-end of the rotation, and his return, or addition back into the fold rather, gives the Pirates a luxury many teams don’t have, which is depth in the starting rotation, and Oviedo’s presence could prove fruitful throughout the season when injuries, fatigue and other factors come into play.
Its safe to say the Pirates won the Jose Quintana/Chris Stratton trade with their division rivals, even with Quintana starting a playoff game for St. Louis and Malcom Nunez not having panned out just yet, if at all, but Oviedo has come out as the best long-term player of that group, and he has a chance to add to resume in 2025 as a starter, and maybe he’ll get into the millions in his ARB figure the next go round.
Welcome back Johan Oviedo.
Steel City Pirates 