PITTSBURGH -- It’s going on two years since Quinn Priester debuted for the Pirates at PNC Park, a former first-round Draft pick who was rushed to the Majors at age 22 as part of the first starting pitcher/catcher battery born in the 2000s. He gave up seven runs that day in an 11-0 loss. From the start, he was a project.
The Pirates stayed patient for a stretch before trading him to the Red Sox in 2024, who stayed patient for a stretch before trading him to the Brewers last month. The cost was high; in dire need of healthy starting pitching, the Brewers gave up two good prospects plus a first-round pick, thinking that Priester could help them in the present while continuing to develop into what he could be in the future.
Six weeks into his Milwaukee tenure, he remains a project. But then there’s a day like Saturday, when Priester faced his former team for the first time and gave the Brewers six of his best innings of the year in a 2-1 loss to the Pirates.
“From 2023 to right now,” said Brewers lefty reliever Rob Zastryzny, Priester’s former Pirates teammate who reunited with him in Milwaukee last month, “he’s grown up by six or seven years.”
Priester pitched well enough to win his return to Pittsburgh, allowing one run on six hits in six innings, with one walk and seven strikeouts. But a blister on his right middle finger contributed to what manager Pat Murphy characterized as the unanimous decision to make a pitching change for the seventh, when a 1-1 game pivoted against the visitors.
In the top of the seventh, Brice Turang batted with the bases loaded and one out and hit a bouncer to a drawn-in second baseman Adam Frazier, who spun around and made a nifty throw home to retire the lead runner and short-circuit a budding rally.
And in the bottom half, a base hit fell in front of Brewers left fielder Jake Bauers, who said he considered diving but opted for a more careful approach considering it was the seventh inning of a tied game. Priester’s replacement, Tyler Alexander, then balked the runner over before surrendering a go-ahead triple to the Brewers’ chief tormentor in this series, Oneil Cruz.
“The Pirates are playing good baseball,” Murphy said. “They’re playing better in so many aspects. They’re putting the ball in play, they’re pitching great.”
For Priester, some of those players were teammates when he made his MLB debut in this ballpark in July 2023. The Pirates led the NL Central that year as late as June 15 before a swoon dropped them into a double-digit deficit by July 16, and the next night, Priester, MLB Pipeline’s No. 4 Pittsburgh prospect at the time, was called up to debut.
“It was thrust on him, like he’s going to save us,” Zastryzny said. “There’s a ton of pressure in that. Instead of just going out to do his job, it’s like, ‘Let me do my job or the city of Pittsburgh doesn’t get to have a playoff team.' It’s too much.”
Zastryzny described a young pitcher focused on maximizing his arsenal, which didn’t yet include the cut fastball which Priester is hoping will take him to the next level. Back then, he would analyze the data available to pitchers nowadays from starts and side sessions, looking for inadequacies. The spin rate of his sinker was off one day, or the slider was down six inches of break.
“He would throw five scoreless and go, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t land my curveball backdoor,’” Zastryzny said. “He always had this need to improve, which is great. But when you talk to him now, he knows how to figure out what’s the best version of himself today, and then pitch with that.
“He knows he’s good. He knows he is capable. There’s less uncertainty about who he is.”
Pitching opposite friend and former teammate Mitch Keller on Saturday reinforced how much Priester has changed in a short time. The cutter is a new pitch, but the much more significant changes have come on the mental side of the ledger, he said. Case in point: Knowing that Saturday would be a particularly emotional outing, he spent the morning working on breathing exercises to put himself in a positive start for the first pitch.
“I guess I don’t have any problem saying it: You kind of want to prove them wrong,” Priester said. “It’s like a, ‘You shouldn’t have let me go,’ type of thought. That goes for anybody who gets traded, not just me. …
“I got off to a rocky start, and it’s easy to fall into that negative trap: 'Can I do this?' Now I know I can. It’s just about being as consistent as possible. Every start, we’re going to get better.”
Priester had already had the blister drained by the time he spoke to reporters, and he didn’t expect it to be a problem moving forward. But the Brewers, who already sent down young starter Tobias Myers twice to work out some inconsistencies in Triple-A, have an off-day next week and are nearing some rotation decisions with veteran left-hander Jose Quintana (shoulder) set to make his lone rehab start on Tuesday with High-A Wisconsin, and right-hander Brandon Woodruff (shoulder, ankle) one or two more rehab starts from pitching in the Majors again.
Priester won’t turn 25 until Sept. 16. That’s worth remembering as he continues working with his third organization.
“It’s like talking to two different people,” Zastryzny said, thinking back to the rookie version of Priester. “One was a kid. One’s a grown man.”