BRADENTON, Fla. - The Pirates have seen their fair share of Tommy John injuries the last few years. Oddly enough, a lot of those injuries took place with the upper level pitchers, rather than being spread evenly throughout the system. This impacted their pitching depth in recent years, with the team needing to trade for pitchers at the deadline in 2015 and 2016, rather than turning to one of their internal options.
We're starting to come out of the other side of the Tommy John tunnel, with many of those depth options returning. The biggest story so far has been Jameson Taillon getting back on track, and even improving his game in his return, while looking like a future top of the rotation option.