5:52pm: Penn was DFA'd in order to make room on the roster for lefty Brian Burres, writes Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Burres has a 6.01 ERA with 5.7 K/9 and 7.1 BB/9 in 265 big league innings.
4:37pm: The Pirates have designated righty Hayden Penn for assignment according to the team. They claimed him off waivers from the Marlins just two weeks ago.
The 25-year-old Penn appeared in three games for Pittsburgh this year, giving up eight hits and eight runs in just 2.1 innings. He walked three and struck out no one. Penn's Triple-A numbers are strong; he's posted a 3.85 ERA and a 7.5 K/9 in 278.1 innings at the level.
He’s just a AAAA reliever. I’m sure he’ll have a couple good relief seasons down the road somewhere, though.
Yeah, he may develop eventually, but there’s no point in having him kill your team every time he comes in to pitch. He’ll have to keep pitching in the minors until he figures something out then maybe he’ll be servicable.
The way I see it, later on in his career, after giving up enough major league runs, he’ll be a crafty enough serviceable reliever. A shame that will be on the downslide of his career.
Maybe it has something to do with him getting absolutely dismantled yesterday.
Penn has a pretty live boring action fastball, which operates better at 91-93 mph.
The thing about him is that whenever he stands on a majorleague mound, he starts overthrowing the ball trying to get it at 94-95 mph at max. effort, which sacrifices his command, and leaves the ball up in the strikezone. His changeup alone isn’t worth a dime if he can’t command the fastball. It needs to be a change of pace from something else, right? The curve is a very good 10-6 late breaker, but inconsistent.
Basically he strikes me more and more of a young pitcher who needs to be on the verge of being left out of baseball, to get it through his head, that repeating his delivery is more important than velocity and making people “ooh” and “ahh”.
That being said, how many of these types of young pitchers do we see every year? Maybe only 1 out of 100 of these high promise guys, it really clicks for? To me, his consistent performance at AAA suggest that there’s some definite talent here. The Os probably hurt his maturation by promoting him to the majors so young. I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance he washes out completely.
might make a nice swap for the royals – pick him up and let Mendoza go back to wherever he was headed before he lost a spot in Texas…
My favorite part about all of this is that a lousy team like the Pirates is hoping to get better by swapping former pitchers from a just as lousy team, the Orioles. Neither pitcher involved is a major league pitcher. I personally think that the Orioles should reacquire Penn so they can be assured of meeting the Pirates in the World Series for the worst teams from each league!
Ooo drop a bad arm and bring in another bad arm ouch.
Too bad Penn can never seem to get it together. He’s still only 25, so maybe he can make it somewhere eventually. Funny that Pittsburgh thinks Burres is going to be a better option, though. I’ll eat my hand if he’s still on their roster in a month.
When you lose your spot to Brian Burres, it’s about time to call it a day.
Yyikes… When was the last time the Pirates ever had a sufficient group of young pitchers?
Well, from this moment one, pirates can forget about coming close to playing .500 baseball.
I didn’t know the cheerleader from Heroes played for the Pirates!