5-24-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Game 3 of the weekend series with the Brewers and the Pirates will see the return of former Bucco, Quinn Priester – who was dealt at last year’s deadline to the Boston Red Sox before being flipped to the Brewers last month.
Drafted in the 1st round of the 2019 draft, Priester was a consensus top 100 prospect in MLB just a few short seasons ago but struggled to make the transition to MLB with a career 5.79 ERA over 138.1 major league innings pitched over the past three years and three different teams – compared to 4.14 ERA through 193.1 innings through parts of 4 years in AAA.
He enters with a 4.66 ERA over 38.2 innings and while he has become proficient at generating ground-balls and a typically low exit velocity, he has really struggled with most every other aspect of his game – specifically with regards to strikeouts and walks where he is among the worst in MLB.
Priester has completely eliminated the 4-seamer from his repertoire of previous seasons due to ineffectiveness but still offers a low-90s sinker and mid-80s slider most of the time against right handed hitters and replacing the slider with a low-90s cutter and low-80s curve when facing lefties.
While the slider has been an excellent weapon for Priester (.568 OPS against), his other options have been far less successful.
For example, lefties are CRUSHING his cutter, batting .357 and slugging .571 against the offering while righties have hit .275 against his sinker with an even higher expected batting average at .303.
Quinn struggles to locate the sinker, typically hanging it up in the zone but has been more effective spotting the slider running down and away against righties. He’ll mix the cutter high and tight against lefties with the curve running outside and low to get swings-and-misses.
Key for hitters today will be patience at the plate, watch for the spin early to avoid the breaking stuff and target the high sinkers, which he threw nearly 55% last outing.
As much as we here at Steel City Pirates hope Quinn has a long and successful career outside of Pittsburgh, here’s hoping it *ONLY* happens outside of Pittsburgh.
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