You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would consider 2020 an advantage for prospects. The pandemic prevented any games from being played, and with the exception of a couple weeks in instructional camp, most players did not get any in-person coaching since spring training was shut down in March.
That doesn’t mean it was a lost year. Some players were able to adapt to the challenges, and some got better.
In a recent conversation with Ben Cherington, I listed off several young pitching prospects in the farm system and asked how they could have gotten better over the past year. One of the pitchers was 20-year-old right-hander Michael Burrows. When responding, Cherington used Burrows as an example of someone who was able to take a step forward despite this year’s obstacles, mentioning his improved command.
That’s a pretty good first impression to the new boss for the 13th best prospect in the system, per Baseball America.
“I took this year and decided to try to make the most of it,” Burrows was telling me. “I made a lot of strides I wouldn’t normally have in a regular season.”
For command, Burrows said he wanted to attack hitters more and nibble around the plate less. He trusts his stuff, and why shouldn’t he? After all, it has started to move a lot more this year.
Burrows has always been into independent research. It's helped make him a better pitcher. A year ago he picked up a Rapsodo so he can more effectively track his velocity and movement. The Pirates have really bought into pitch tunneling since the hire of pitching coach Oscar Marin, but Burrows was doing it before then with high fastballs and curveballs at the knees. He has a close friend in the Dodgers’ system, right-hander Nolan Jones, and the two compare notes on how each team works with pitchers.
“It’s about getting information wherever you can,” Burrows said. “Picking people’s brains wherever you can. I can’t sit here and be naive and say that I don’t need it.”
That independent research was even more valuable because the Pirates had fallen behind the rest of the league in their player development.
This story has been told plenty of times by now. The last regime focused heavily on sinkers and two-seamers, putting a lot of stock into getting quick outs. The strategy did not work as well in the majors in recent years because of skyrocketing home run rates, and it also impact player development in the minors. While other teams started incorporating more technology and new wave thinking, the Pirates were consistently a step behind.
“It was tough because every pitching coach I had [with the Pirates] had a very cookie cutter [approach],” Burrows said. “Throw low in the zone. Just the old, basic stuff that you hear. I was going by it because they are professional pitching coaches.”
To make matters worse, there wasn’t much of a difference between his two fastballs. Burrows sits in the low to mid-90s with his fastball and can throw both a four-seam and two-seam, but it felt a little redundant.
That was until this year.
“Last year, they were blending almost into the same pitch when I threw them,” Burrows said. “Very rarely did I see a see a difference. So that was something I really worked to change, and a lot of that was spin efficiency.”
Spin rates have become an integral part of scouting and evaluating pitchers, but not all spin is created equal. There is "traverse spin," which leads to movement, and "gyrospin," which does not. The more traverse spin, the better. This is measured in "spin efficiency," or the amount of spin that leads to movement. While the rule of thumb is the higher the spin rate, the more movement the pitcher gets, a pitcher with a low spin rate and high efficiency can potentially get more movement than someone with a high rate and low efficiency.
For example, Mitch Keller had a really high fastball spin rate in his rookie season, finishing in the top 10% in baseball with an average of 2,473 rotations per minute (RPM), but only got fairly average movement. During the shutdown, he monitored his work on Rapsodo and boosted his spin efficiency percentage from the low-90s to 95%. So even though his average spin rate dropped to 2,327 RPM this season – which was still better than 60% of the league – his movement went up, getting an extra inch of horizontal break and a bit more vertically, too. That improvement came from just a slight increase.
Burrows has always had a high spin rate, with FanGraphs tracking his fastball at 2,550 RPM and his curveball at 2,800 RPM. The site describes him as a “spin rate monster.” Only three other prospects in baseball can match that spin on their heater and breaking pitch: Julian Garcia of the Phillies, Blake Rivera of the Giants and Jordan Sheffield of the Dodgers. Of those four, Burrows is regarded as the best pitching prospect.
Now he’s getting the movement to go with it. Ideally, Burrows said his four-seamer would “grab air and try to defy gravity, so the ball travels up.” He started to see it this year, as his spin efficiency went from around 75% to the low-90s.
“It’s a night and day difference,” as he put it.
That’s a significant upgrade over the course of a couple months. He credited that jump to a prototype ball he was able to try out.
Jones’ coach with the Dodgers, Connor McGuiness, is one of the inventors of a product called Clean Fuego. As Burrows described it, it’s the “inside of a baseball.” It looks like a fat hockey puck rather than a sphere, giving enough room to have a four-seam grip.
The two flat, outside parts are painted red, and if the pitcher throws it correctly, they won’t see the color.
“All you’re trying to do is get that straight up and down spin,” Burrows explained.
Here it is in action:
Getting that vertical movement, especially up in the zone with a fastball, is definitely a tool that can elevate a pitching prospect quickly. The strike zone is taller than it is wide, giving it more room to move while still being a called strike.
High heat and curveballs at the knees are Burrows’ bread and butter. If he reaches the majors one day, it’s going to be because of that. The Clean Fuego is helping him with the former.
“I don’t want to be a guy who is a jack of all trades,” Burrows said. “I would rather be a master of two pitches and still get that third offering, but I really want to hammer my fastball, curveball. I want those to be elite and have those every day when I show up.”
With the exception of Cody Bolton, all of the Pirates’ top pitching prospects are 21 years old or younger and were projected to be in the lower levels of the farm system this season. Quinn Presiter, Brennan Malone, Tahnaj Thomas and Carmen Mlodzinski are bigger names and are drawing more attention at the moment, but Burrows is the sleeper.
The Pirates are very open that one of the traits they value most is a willingness and ability to learn. Burrows is showing that, and it has led to a fastball that reaches the mid-90s and can move. If it keeps developing, he could find himself in the conversation for a future rotation spot.
