Pirates to promote top LHP prospect

The Pirates are calling up pitching prospect Hunter Barco, reports Brent Martineau of CBS47/FOX30. The Bucs will need to make corresponding moves to open active and 40-man roster spots for the lefty. The 40-man move might be easy since infielder/outfielder Ronny Simon recently dislocated his left shoulder. If he’s not coming back in the final few days, he could be moved from the 10-day injured list to the 60-day.

Barco, now 24, was selected by the Pirates in the second round of the 2022 draft. Since then, he has been putting up good numbers on the farm, climbing the ranks of the minors while also climbing up prospect rankings.

Many in the industry considered him a potential first-round pick while he was pitching for Florida. Unfortunately, he required Tommy John surgery before being drafted, which bumped him down the board and allowed the Bucs to get him in the second round.

He recovered from that procedure and was able to get back on the mound late in 2023, though he only logged 18 1/3 innings that year. He got a more proper professional season last year, throwing 66 innings over 18 appearances, split between High-A and Double-A. He allowed 3.27 earned runs per nine, struck out 31.2% of batters faced, gave out walks at an 8.3% clip and got grounders on 46.4% of balls in play.

This year, he has stretched out to 99 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A. In that time, he has a 2.81 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate, 11.8% walk rate and 45.8% ground ball rate. The Triple-A season finished yesterday, so he wasn’t going to have a chance to add to that innings total if he stayed on the farm.

He was slated to be Rule 5 eligible this winter. The Bucs were surely going to add him to their 40-man roster to protect him, meaning he was going to be using up a 40-man roster spot this offseason regardless. By adding him now, they can put a few more innings on his arm here in 2025, get him accustomed to the big league environment and see how his stuff plays against major league opponents.

The Pirates have been stuck in a rebuild for a while now, but those prone to optimism could point to a few things. Shortstop prospect Konnor Griffin is now considered one of the top prospects in the sport, with some outlets considering him to be the very best. He is only 19 years old but has reached Double-A and could plausibly make a major league debut at some point in 2026. At the big league level, guys like Spencer Horwitz, Jared Triolo and Bryan Reynolds are having strong second halves, perhaps giving the position player group a bit of momentum towards better results next year.

But the most notable part of the Pirates’ roster is their collection of talented and controllable starting pitching options. Paul Skenes is one of the best pitchers alive right now and is controlled for another four seasons after this one. Mitch Keller is a solid mid-rotation guy who is signed through 2028. Johan Oviedo just returned from a long surgery layoff but he could be a viable back-end guy.

Then there’s a big cluster of young guys who are just bubbling to the big league level. Bubba Chandler, Mike Burrows, Braxton Ashcraft and Thomas Harrington have all made it to the majors but each one still has fewer than 100 big league innings, with varying degrees of big league success. Jared Jones had a nice debut last year, posting a 4.14 ERA in 121 2/3 innings, but he required UCL surgery in May of this year and will be out until mid-2026.

There are still lots of question marks in that group, given the limited experience of most of those guys, but it’s possible the front office thinks about using this collection of starting pitchers on the trade market. The Pirates have had great difficulty developing hitters. They also have one of the smallest payrolls in the league, which means solving the problem in free agency isn’t likely to happen either.

This summer, there were plenty of rumors surrounding the Pittsburgh rotation. Keller in particular seemed to get a lot of attention but ultimately wasn’t moved. The Bucs did flip Bailey Falter to the Royals, but that was a far less impactful deal than a potential deal of Keller or anyone else in this group.

Going into the winter, it will be an interesting situation to watch. The Pirates could hold onto all of their pitchers and see how things play out in 2026. Not all of them will meet expectations and some of them will surely get hurt. There would be risk in subtracting an arm or two and reducing the overall depth, though it also might be the club’s best path to making a notable lineup boost. For now, they can get a look at Barco in the majors and see how it goes, but some big decisions will have to be made in the coming months.

At this late stage of the calendar, Barco won’t be able to exhaust rookie status before the winter arrives. That means the prospect promotion incentive could be on the table in 2026, depending on where he lands on prospect lists between now and then. A player is PPI eligible if he is on two of the three top 100 lists from Baseball America, ESPN and MLB Pipeline. He’s currently listed in the #82 spot at MLB Pipeline, though he’s not on BA’s list and wasn’t on the ESPN August update.

Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images