Pirates Practicing Caution With Top Pitching Prospect

Cherington also said that they won't stop Hernandez from getting better and improving, but that they have to make sure they are careful with his inning count in 2026.

“I think first of all, just keep it case-by-case," Cherington said. "Everybody is an individual. Seth’s case is going to be different than anybody else’s. It’s definitely true he’s off to a really good start. He’s very talented.

“On the one hand, we don’t want to create a sort of hard ceiling on what someone’s capable of, but we’re going to continue to challenge guys, including Seth, and sometimes that can mean with the right player, they can move faster. We’ll see.

“I think that what’s interesting about Seth and specifically is that as a high school pitcher, he just never pitched, I mean no high school pitcher, but including Seth, pitches that many innings, actually, over a course of a 12-month calendar between the high school season and the way the showcase stuff works.

“You’re just not building up a lot of innings as a high school pitcher. So you come into pro ball, we know what the eventual outcome is we want. We want Seth, or any young starting pitching prospect to be in a position at some point to start to get into that 130-150-170 inning category where you see guys like [Mitch] Keller and [Paul] Skenes eventually graduate to.

“But that can’t happen overnight. You can’t go from 35 innings in high school to doing that right away. So you’ve got to kind of create this ladder, for high school pitchers especially. That by itself, probably means the pace is going to look a little bit different than it would for a college pitcher or even a high school position player, where you’re not as concerned about the total volume.

“So we’ll see what happens. We’re very glad he’s a Pirate. He’s an incredibly talented kid. He’s off to a great start. We’ll keep challenging, but we got to keep an eye on that, how much volume can you put on him in 2026 because we want that to be a step towards what it’s going to be in the future." 

How Hernandez Should Progress in 2026

Hernandez threw few innings during his time at Corona, with just 56 innings as a junior in 2024 and then 53 innings as a senior in 2025.

Pirates starting pitchers like Mitch Keller and Paul Skenes will hit around the 170-180 innings mark this season with 30+ starts, something that Hernandez isn't near yet.

Hernandez has gone longer in each of his three starts, with just three innings and 39 pitches in his first start to four innings and 53 pitches in his second start and then five innings and 67 starts.

The Pirates will likely move him up to High-A Greensboro, particularly if he continues pitching like he has, but it's unlikely he pitches the whole season.

Hernandez is at 12 innings so far and could get close to 100 innings in 2026, but he's still a developing arm that the Pirates will want to see take on a bigger workload, but incrementally over time and not all at once.