The raw stuff that Michael Burrows possesses is eye-catching. Back in June, in a conversation with the Post-Gazette, Burrows’ manager Kieran Mattison compared it to a video game when everything was clicking.
That Burrows has emerged as one of the top pitchers in the Pirates’ farm system could be surprising to some. He was an 11th-round draft pick in 2018. The Pirates went and got him, though, signing him over slot out of high school and coaxing him away from his commitment to play at Connecticut.
His success since — Burrows had a 2.20 ERA with 66 strikeouts in 49 innings of work for High-A Greensboro this year — can at least partially be attributed to what he calls his “man strength.”
“I think I was a little bit of a late bloomer as far as high school kids go,” Burrows told the Post-Gazette. “I didn’t have a lot of weight, I guess. I just didn’t have a lot of strength. I feel like now I’m growing into my man strength and a lot of things have been working for me. Just putting in the work and finding that man strength that’s coming in, and will be for the next five, six years now. It’s going to be really fun.”
The key to Burrows’ success may just be a mindset. The Pirates sent him to the Arizona Fall League this year to make up some innings he lost due to an injury at Greensboro. The rosters in that league are littered with some of the best prospects in baseball and, according to Baseball Reference, Burrows is 2.3 years younger than the average age of pitchers in Arizona.
If you ask Burrows about his inclusion on the roster, his leap into the upper echelon of the Pirates’ prospect rankings, or his relative dominance in High-A, the answer is essentially the same: He expects this kind of success.
“I think my confidence has always been there,” Burrows said. “... ‘This guy’s not touching it.’ That is my cue before every pitch: ‘He’s not touching it,’ with maybe a couple of swears mixed in.”
It’s easier to foster that sort of confidence in the environments Burrows has experienced. In Greensboro, he was on a pitching staff that included the Pirates’ No. 2 prospect Quinn Priester and No. 10 prospect Carmen Mlodzinski, both of whom had good seasons of their own. Burrows’ competitiveness, though, gives him the desire to out-pitch even his teammates, saying he wants to do better than them in a healthy, teammate-friendly way.
In Arizona, that’s no different. It doesn’t matter that some of his teammates and opponents are ranked among MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects. It doesn’t matter that he is a bit younger and has seen limited action so far. He knows he belongs.
“I don’t feel like I’m outside this group whatsoever. I feel like I’m right in the middle of the pack,” Burrows said. “Obviously guys better than me are here and just seeing that, that competitive side of me is like, ‘All right, I want to be at the top of this group. No doubt.’ Once I’m put into that setting, I want to be at the top of whoever is in that setting with me.”
Burrows has put in plenty of work to get to this point, too, fine-tuning his workout routine consistently over the last dozen years.
This past spring, when Burrows arrived at minor league spring training, pitching development coordinator Josh Hopper met with Burrows and further tweaked the things Burrows should work on.
Combined with his intangibles, that work has led Burrows to a pretty good spot. For the rest of the fall, he’ll continue to work in Arizona. He says he is piggy-backing with fellow Pirates farmhand Roansy Contreras throughout the short season, expecting to sit around three or four innings in his outings.
After that, he’ll take some time off and eventually head into the season. He, Priester, Mlodzinski and the rest of the young Pirates’ arms will rise another level heading into the 2022 season, inching closer to the majors. Whenever Burrows gets there, it would be a good bet that he’ll be confident he belongs.
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: November 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: November 1, 2021, 2:42 p.m.
