Seth Hernandez Giving Pirates Tough Decision to Make

He has loved the command and strike throwing from Hernandez, but that they will let his pitching development group determine when best to move him up a level, which shouldn't come too long with the way Hernandez has pitched so far.

"I think the strike throwing and the command has been, you don’t know, obviously…we know his stuff can come out hot, we know how talented he is, but until they’re in professional games, we just don’t know for sure what the command and strike throwing’s been," Cherington said.

"So that’s been the most encouraging thing to me is just how much he’s been in the zone and dominating counts and things like that. 

"I’ll let our CPD group, our CPD leadership, our pitching group make those recommendations. I like to let it come from the ground up and we’ll see when those phone calls come. He’s off to a pretty impressive start.

"The nice thing about pitching too is that, no matter where they are, we know every pitch he throws, we know the quality of every pitch he throws, we know the location of every pitch that he throws. So when you have that information, it’s in some ways, a little less important who he’s doing it against because you know the part that he’s controlling and we can kind of track that.

“But again, it’s been a terrific start. At some point, if he is pitching like this, I anticipate we probably want to challenge him, but we’ll let that recommendation come from our CPD group."

What Hernandez Has to do to Earn Promotion

It's clear by how Hernandez has pitched so far that he's advanced for Single-A and that he probably should just head right up to High-A.

What the Pirates are doing with Hernandez in Single-A is see how he adjusts with higher pitch counts and inning workloads, seeing how he adjusts to that in the professional game.

Hernandez threw less than a combined 110 innings over his past two seasons at Corona High School in Corona, Calif., before the Pirates drafted him.

The best Pirates pitchers, like Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller, will go 30+ starts and average around 180 innings, something that Hernandez is just not ready for yet.

He's increased the amount he's pitching in games, with three innings in his first start, four innings in his second start and then five innings each in his third and fourth starts.

If Hernandez can keep up his performances while throwing more, than the Pirates will have no choice but to promote him to High-A in the near future.