BRADENTON, Fla. -- It may not be completely fair for him, but it’s hard not to compare Brennan Malone and where he is in his development compared to a couple of other Pirate prospects: Quinn Priester and Liover Peguero.
Like Priester, Malone was a first-round draft pick in 2019, and he was traded alongside Peguero in January of 2020 for Starling Marte. Peguero and Priester are now both considered top 100 prospects by Baseball America, are set to play in Class AA Altoona this season and Peguero has even been added to the roster.
Malone, on the other hand, pitched just 3 ⅔ innings for Class Low-A Bradenton last season because of lat and right shoulder injuries and has yet to advance any further.
Now 21, Malone still has an opportunity to live up to his high potential that drew the Pirates to him, but he’s going to need to take a big step in 2022 to do that.
“It’s time to turn on the jets,” Malone said at Pirate City Saturday. “It’s really time to go now. I feel like I’ve put in the work in the offseason to prove it this year.”
Malone entered last season as the Pirates’ No. 9 prospect, according to Baseball America, but a couple shaky outings with the Marauders and the injury greatly hurt his prospect stock. In the midseason update, Baseball America dropped him to No. 29. Malone’s odds of being included at all on the 2022 list don’t look particularly promising, either.
Of course, Malone could jump back on the list and reestablish himself as one of the organization’s top pitching prospects with a bounce back campaign, but those two years are going to be on his ledger throughout his development.
“You can’t block it out,” Malone said of last year. “You learn from it, and you move on. I feel like there was a lot of injuries and little stuff that could have been fixed.”
Fortunately for Malone, he hasn’t lost his stuff through the injuries. His fastball still ramps up to the high 90s, and he has noticed more ride and sink with it. His slider has evolved more into a cutter, but the eye-opening breaking offering is the curveball. It’s always had 12-to-6 downward movement, but in recent bullpens, he’s been hitting 3,000 RPM with it, which is elite even by major-league standards.
That stuff made him a first round pick. Knowing how to use it and throw it for strikes will determine if he is a major-league starter, a reliever or just a minor-leaguer.
“That’s one of the things I really want to work on in-game because I haven’t really had the chance to practice in-game with that,” he said. “Just throwing strikes and trying to get people out. Not trying to do too much. Not trying to strike everybody out. I just want to get outs and help the team win.”
Malone has been working on a couple of mechanical changes at a baseball training facility in his hometown of Charlotte, N.C. called X2 Athletic Performance this winter, trying to keep what he described as a “whippy” arm motion while improving how he pushes off the rubber and moves his hips. He's supplemented that knowledge by diving into a pitching data base with what pitching coordinator Josh Hopper described as hundreds of pages of drills and exercises.
His success there has helped him just as much on the mental side. He’s always had confidence, but those injuries on top of the pressure of being one of the main prospects that Pirates have acquired in their rebuild does take a toll.
While it was a small sample size, in 14 competitive innings last year, Malone walked 10, hit a batter and threw three wild pitches. Chalk it up to a combination of the mechanics and nerves.
Seeing positive results come from better mechanics, plus knowing his teammates have his back, can help give him a much-needed boost.
“Just trusting myself, trusting what I know I can do,” Malone said. “And I’ve shown it in the past. I just know I’m capable of that. Having faith in myself, that helped a lot.”
After barely appearing in any games in 2021, Malone has thrown a couple live batting practices already this minor-league camp. Those outings continued to give him more confidence going into 2022.
“My adrenaline has been spiked really high,” Malone said. “That definitely gave me a little taste, and I’m ready to go.”
So when he does get on the mound in a game again, is he going to chase triple digits on his first pitch back?
“I hope that first game, it’s a strike.”
