Floyd: What’s the Pirates’ Plan for Mike Burrows?

Pirates’ right-handed pitching prospect Mike Burrows spent all but two starts on the shelf last season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April 2023.

Despite returning to game action less than 14 months after the operation, a recovery on the speedy side for an injury that can take 18 months or more to fully heal from, Burrows’ progress during the 2024 season has been anything but linear.

One of Pittsburgh’s Top 30 prospects per MLB Pipeline—and one who climbed as high as the top ten prior to his UCL injury—Burrows took his lumps in his first four starts, managing to pitch into the third inning of a game just once against rookie ball and Single-A. He also got tagged for 13 earned runs in 13.2 innings, an ugly performance for anybody, much less someone who looked poised to mow through Triple-A the prior season.

Burrows has looked more like his old self since making it back to Indianapolis, pitching to a 3.86 ERA and striking out 35 batters in 32.2 innings but, as always, raw numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Mike Burrows: Breaking Down the Stats

In nine Triple-A appearances (eight starts) this season, Burrows has yet to face an opposing lineup for a third turn. He’s pitched more than four innings just once, a five inning relief stint on August 8th when Jared Jones’ need for a rehab start crowded the Indians’ rotation, pushing Burrows to the bullpen.

He also hasn’t thrown more than 75 pitches in a game, reaching that number just once. Of 576 pitches thrown, 370 have gone for strikes, a more than respectable 64 percent clip. Burrows’ fastball velocity sits anywhere between 92 and 96 miles per hour, a hair off his 97 MPH maximum but still well within reason.

When asked on August 28 whether Burrows still faced a pitch or inning limit since returning from surgery, Pirates’ Director of Sports Medicine Todd Tomczyk said this:

“He’s full-go from a medical perspective, that he’s healed, that he’s met all the benchmarks of the rehab. We’re working diligently with our performance team, with our pitching department, to monitor how he responds coming back from surgery, as we do all of our pitchers, so I wouldn’t per se say he has an inning limit. There’s no restrictions in pitch repertoire from his arsenal to how he executes and goes about his business. How he responds to it is what we’re diligently working through. At this juncture, there are no innings limits for Mike Burrows.”

The numbers suggest otherwise.

What Gives?

Of course, the difficulty of receiving a straight answer from any sports team regarding matters of performance and limitations can rank similarly to pulling teeth. These are sensitive topics often best left up in the air.

To Tomczyk’s point regarding pitch selection, Mike Burrows added a slider to his repertoire this season, something he tinkered with in 2023 but never got a chance to fully test out in a season that lasted only two starts.

In terms of performance, it’s harder to break down the Pirates’ plan for Burrows: his Triple-A starts have gone one of two ways. He either makes it through four innings allowing one run, or gives up more than one run and leaves prematurely. Burrows hasn’t started giving up abnormally high rates of contact before getting pulled after four innings, either.

Causation is more difficult to determine in those cases, though, as he needs to be on his A-game in order to even make it that deep in the game, getting the hook at the first sign of trouble in his other starts. Similarly, his velocity remains consistent throughout his starts: it doesn’t dip later on as he begins to labor.

In the four Triple-A starts where Burrows has completed four innings, his pitch counts sat at 60, 64, 74 and 74. Per conventional wisdom—and given no outward signs of struggling—it would’ve made sense to give him at least another inning or two in each of those cases, although only the last of those starts came after Tomczyk’s statement that Burrows wasn’t on a pitch count.

Next Steps

If the Pirates have reservations about allowing Mike Burrows to pitch deeper into games, perhaps a move to the bullpen is in order. They aren’t hurting for starting pitching. Paul Skenes, Jared Jones and Mitch Keller are under contract for much of this decade, and they have minor league arms like Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington and Braxton Ashcraft knocking on the door for a big league spot.

Even in an era where pitchers’ usage is monitored more than ever, 90-100 pitches and a third shot at the opposing lineup is the bare minimum for a starting pitcher unless they’re getting shelled.

Furthermore, moving Burrows to the bullpen doesn’t mean you’re punting on his chances of becoming a big league starter. It’s an opportunity to monitor his workload while maximizing results. It also addresses a position of immediate need on the Pirates’ roster.

It makes sense to proceed with caution following an injury, but it’s harder to see the logic of capping Burrows’ starts at 75 pitches regardless of performance for going on half a season. Furthermore, Burrows holds a spot on the Pirates’ 40-man roster: he isn’t a recent draftee with plenty of time to burn toward development.

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to improve without pushing boundaries. It’s similarly difficult to see the benefit of keeping the training wheels on even during strong outings in some Frankenstein’s Monster-esque version of starting with “no restrictions”.