When Pirates pitcher Quinn Priester stopped thinking so much, he started having fun again

Quinn Priester had a simple solution for his struggles with the Pittsburgh Pirates, one the right-hander pitcher employed with resounding success after he was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis last month.

“Stop thinking as much. Just throw that thing,” Priester said. “And I had really good results when I did that, so I’m just gonna keep doing that.”

The Pirates added Priester to their taxi squad Tuesday, and he’s expected to be activated and pitch in a bulk relief role following opener Colin Selby when they play the Washington Nationals on Wednesday at PNC Park. That Priester is back in the big leagues had as much to do with him getting out of his own head as anything.

A 2019 first-round pick, Priester is a top-10 prospect for the Pirates but didn’t show his pedigree much in his first stint in the majors. He was 2-2 with a 9.10 ERA and 1.92 WHIP, surrendering seven home runs while allowing almost as many walks (18) as he had strikeouts (23).

Priester admits to overthinking every aspect of his pitching.

“That’s been my whole career,” Priester said. “It’s not lack of effort. It’s almost too much where I’m trying to fix so many things or trying to get so much better at one time when it takes time. Just kind of went back and let the body take over, let the athlete take back over, and good things happened.”

Pirates manager Derek Shelton said it’s not an unusual for rookies to deal with paralysis by analysis when making the leap to the majors.

“When most guys come to the big leagues – not just with Quinn – everything is going too fast,” Shelton said. “You over-analyze every single thing that happens whether it’s good or bad. Why is this happening or why is this not happening? I think that’s natural.”

So the Pirates sent him back to Indianapolis to work on his delivery, believing that his problems were as much mechanical as mental.

“I don’t think it was, ‘Stop thinking so much and throw,’” Shelton said. “But the second part was, ‘You need to focus on the ball coming out of your hand and let the natural ability kind of take over.’”

To get Priester back to feeling natural on the mound, the Pirates had him pitch in relief in two of his four outings. The results were promising. He had a 2.66 ERA over 20.1 innings and averaged 14.6 strikeouts against 5.3 walks per nine innings. More important, there was increased velocity on his four-seam fastball, which averaged 92.6 mph with the Pirates.

Priester credited the “carefree” feeling for making pitching fun again.

“It’s nice. You can throw balls by guys instead of just having to hit spots perfectly,” Priester said. “It definitely freed me up. It’s fun to turn around and see 96 (mph) and not turn around and see 92.”

Priester is bringing a newfound mentality to the mound with the Pirates.

“It sounds stupid, but literally, it’s just, ‘Hey, we did really good work here,’” Priester said. “We saw a little bit of a bump in velo once we came up and then it was, ‘Look, I’ve learned a lot. Let’s just have fun competing. Stop thinking so much. Throw the pitch that I’m convicted in and see what happens.’”