Luis Heredia: Pittsburgh Pirates Phenom Coming Along Nicely

When we talk about the future of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the names Gerrit Cole, Jammison Taillon and Starling Marte get brought up about as frequently as the Pirates hitters struck out in their three game series at the Milwaukee Brewers to open up the second half of the season.

If you haven’t been paying attention over the weekend, that was an awful lot.

But one name has also been forgotten about among most Pirates fans and that is teenage phenom Luis Heredia.

The signing of Heredia was as important as the Bucs coming to terms with Taillon or Cole and is a bright spot for the future of the Bucs starting rotation.

So far, Heredia has been better than advertised.

He won his first game of the season Friday night for the State College Spikes (Rum Bunter’s Tom Smith breaks down his performance very nicely) and has put together a very good 2012 season to date.

Looking at Heredia’s performance so far on the season and you see a guy that could potentially be a star down the road.

He’s started five games with a 1-1 record but has an ERA of only 1.13 in 24.0 innings pitched.

It gets more impressive though.

Heredia’s faced 96 batters so far on the season, allowing only 20 hits and six walks. He has a WHIP of 1.03.  The kid pounds the strike zone. He’s only allowed five total runs (three earned) on the season and has shown that he doesn’t have to rely on his devastating curveball to get outs as he threw only one deuce all night in recording his first win of the year.

Taillion and Cole are getting a ton of attention (and well deserved) but don’t forget about Heredia.  By 2015, that trio of young right arms could turn out to be a dominant top half of the future Pirates rotation.

Heredia has star written all over him and his progression is worth keeping a very close eye on.