Pirates’ Starter Depth Could Impact Tyler Eppler

The Pirates spent the early half of this decade drafting tall righthanded starting pitchers, and they’ve taken every opportunity to add them in trades as well.

That allowed Pittsburgh to build a big league rotation made up entirely of righthanders who stand 6-foot-3 or taller, but it also created a backlog at the Triple-A and Double-A level that could have implications for the Rule 5 draft.

Along with big league starters Gerrit Cole, Ivan Nova, Jameson Taillon, Chad Kuhl and Trevor Williams, the Pirates already have three more righthanders on the 40-man roster in Tyler Glasnow, Clay Holmes and Nick Kingham.

They would have to add another in Tyler Eppler to shield him from the Rule 5 draft.

The 6-foot-6, 220-pound Eppler was a 2014 sixth-round pick out of Sam Houston State, but he hasn’t been a part of the discussion for a big league roster spot. His biggest problem may be that he throws too many strikes.

Eppler’s fastball sits at around 93-94 mph and he can use it in all four quadrants. He throws a curveball, slider, cutter and a changeup that may be his best secondary pitch. Those pitches helped make him a workhorse at Double-A Altoona in 2016 and at Triple-A Indianapolis in 2017.

Eppler has combined for 48 starts and 298.2 innings the past two seasons. Sixty-seven percent of his pitches were strikes in 2017, when he walked 2.2 batters per nine innings to rank eighth in the International League.

But staying in the zone has also made Eppler hittable. None of his five pitches generates many swings and misses. Most are designed to draw contact, and there has been a lot of contact the past two seasons.

Opponents hit .287 against Eppler in 2017, when he logged a 4.89 ERA and allowed 1.5 home runs per nine, the third-highest rate in the IL.

Still, Eppler’s control has value, and if the Pirates could get him to be a little more effectively wild, he might provide depth value.