6-11-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
The Pirates will look to win the rubber match in the Marlins series before heading on the road to Chicago tomorrow as they’ll face veteran Cal Quantrill, who enters today with a 3-6 record and 5.63 ERA over 54.1 innings pitched.
Much of Quantrill’s struggles were in the first month of the season as his ERA was 8.10 over his first 6 starts with 16 strikeouts and 10 walks but has been excellent since then with a 3.25 ERA and 24 Ks to just 7 free passes over his last 6 outings.
An 8-year veteran across 4 organizations, Quantrill was signed as a free agent by Miami this past offseason for $3.5M.
The last time Quantrill visited the Steel City, he got the best of the Bucs as he pitched 7.2 scoreless innings with just 3 hits, 9 strikeouts and zero walks – one of just 3 games pitched last season where he didn’t issue a single walk and an extreme outlier as Quantrill led the National League in free passes with 69.
Quantrill does have one fun accolade on his mantle as he is the most recent MLB pitcher to throw an immaculate inning – 9 pitches/3 strikeouts – achieving the feat on May 18th
He has a diverse pitch mix, which includes a 4-seam, splitter, cutter, curve, sinker, slider and a rare changeup – and he uses them all the time and all over the plate.
Quantrill will primarily use the cutter/splitter/4-seam against lefties while using the 4-seam as his main offering against righties with secondaries of curve/sinker/slider/splitter.
One thing to watch for is strange reverse splits from Quantrill this season as righties are posting an OPS of 1.044 while lefties have just a .632 in a similar amount of plate appearances.
Lefties should target the upstairs cutters as they are batting .278 and slugging .444 against the pitch but right handed hitters have been feasting on just about everything Cal throws at them with a .300+ batting average against his main five offerings and a .550+ slugging against the six used against them this year.
When Quantrill gets ahead in counts, he leans more heavily on the curve against righties and the splitter when facing lefties but if he’s behind in the count, he tries to get back by going fastball-heavy so that’s what hitters should look to exploit.
Don Kelly may stack the righties in the lineup today to take advantage of Quantrill’s splits but he’s a crafty pitcher who mixes speed and location. The team can’t take for granted what others have done against him and just need to find ways to get the barrel to the ball.
Steel City Pirates 