Prospect Watch: Beau Sulser Looking to Develop into Dominant Reliever
Baseball is a game that once someone in the family picks it up, it is usually passed down through the generations. For the Sulser family, they have two sons who have made it to professional baseball and are currently pitching in the Minor Leagues. The first was Cole Sulser, who was drafted by the Cleveland Indians and is currently in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. The other is Pirates pitching prospect Beau Sulser who pitched out of the Altoona Curve bullpen for the majority of the 2019 season. After battling back from elbow surgery during his days in college baseball, Beau Sulser has quickly become one of the best relief pitching prospects in the system for Pittsburgh.
Last season, he served as the set-up man for a majority of the year for fellow relief prospect Matt Eckelman. Sulser finished the year going 8-3 in 33 games, six starts, with a 2.72 ERA. After starting the year exclusively in the bullpen, he ended up being stretched out and started working deep into ball games to help raise his stock. The thing he improved upon most last season was his ability to limit the opposition to just a .241 batting average in 90 innings of work. Sulser's strikeout rate was lower than your average reliever, as he fanned 63 batters in those 96 innings of work, and he had some struggles with control throughout the season. However, with him flipping roles a couple of times throughout the season, it could have had an effect on his effectiveness.
Growing up in Southern California, Sulser followed right in his brother's footsteps in the sports world. He played a wide variety of sports growing up, including soccer and basketball, but hid favorite sport by far was baseball. He played four years of high school baseball at Ramona High School and graduated in 2012. He then went to the same Ivy League school as his brother, playing four years of collegiate baseball at Dartmouth College. It was important for Sulser not only to play Division I baseball, but get a great education at the same time. He majored in Psychology and became an integral part of the Dartmouth bullpen right from the start.
During his first season with the Big Green, he ended up appearing in seven games in relief and pitched to an inflated 5.40 ERA. He was hit around quite a bit during that first year and that led to him allowing a lot of runs. His control left little to be desired with four walks in ten innings of work, however, he did show some promise as his strikeout rate was at 16.6%. He came back for his Sophomore season and had similar struggles even with a move to the starting rotation. His ERA was back up in the fives and you could tell something was wrong. That is when he learned he would have to undergo Tommy John Surgery and miss the entire 2015 season. He knew first-hand what this surgery was like, as he saw his brother go through it as well, and he was determined to come back strong from it.
He did just that during his Junior and Senior season, going from a back-end of the rotation pitcher to one of the top starting arms at Dartmouth. During his senior season, he was named the Ivy League Pitcher of the year ranking third in the nation in ERA (1.40) and second in WHIP (0.80). Sulser's dominance during his senior year, put him on several scouts radars as he threw his fastball on there between 89 and 91 miles per hour. It was the Pittsburgh Pirates who ended up picking up Sulser in the 10th round of the 2017 MLB Draft. He was sent to the West Virginia Black Bears to start his professional career as he tried to make a name for himself in the professional ranks.
It was a rough first year in the professional ranks as he went 2-4 with a 5.31 ERA in 40.2 innings of work. He started the year in the bullpen and put up good numbers through the months of June and July. Of his 15 appearances during those two months, he threw six shutout appearances and never gave up more than two earned runs in any of those outings. He would end up moving to the starting rotation in the month of August in a move that would end up hurting his stats. He made six starts from August 6th through August 28th and ended up hitting some rough spots. He got back to the bullpen for his final appearance of the season and would get knocked around giving up five runs, four earned, in just 1.1 innings of work.
The Pirate's faith in Sulser might have looked miss placed during that first season as his inflated ERA was not what you wanted to see from a 23-year-old tenth round draft pick. However, when you look away from the ERA, there were some positives for Sulser to build off of. He walked just seven batters all season long counting his good control that he showed during his college days. He also continued striking out batters at a high clip with 33 in 40.1 innings of work. After struggling in the Black Bears starting rotation, the Pirates decided to move him back to the bullpen and he would earn a promotion to Class Low-A West Virginia in 2018.
He would turn things around as a set-up man in the Power bullpen and dropped his ERA to 2.35 in 57.1 innings of work. The full-time move to the bullpen allowed him to focus on throwing harder, rather than stretching himself out, and it led to a 28.7 strikeout percentage. He ended up splitting the closer duties with former Pirates prospect Matt Seelninger. Sulser ended up picking up eight saves for the Power and allowed an opponent batting average of just .205 during the season. One of the biggest things that helped Sulser during that 2018 season was getting to work with former Pirates closer Joel Hanrahan, who was the pitching coach for the Power at the time.
Under Hanrahan's tutelage, Sulser was able to find himself as a set-up man and helped him set career-low numbers. He had a career-best strikeout rate and continued to pound the strike zone, walking just four batters all season. At 24 years of age, Sulser was one of the oldest pitchers at the Low-A level and it was thought that he would continue on the path of many Minor Leaguers and pitch for Advanced-A Bradenton last season. However, in a surprise move, the Pirates would send Sulser to Double-A Altoona where he would get to be the set-up man for Pirates' other relief pitching star Matt Eckelman.
Also, making the move was Joel Hanrahan as he was named the team's pitching coach, and the back-end of the Curve bullpen became lethal. While Eckelman was thriving as the team's closer, Sulser was doing just as well, if not a little bit better, going 8-3 with a 2.72 ERA. However, he suffered his first spell with control issues as he walked 33 batters in 96.1 innings of work. He also wasn't striking out as many batters at the same clip as the season before, as he finished with 63 strikeouts for the second season in a row. Sulser uses his movement more than his speed to get outs, and the players at the higher levels of the Minor Leagues took advantage of that, and Sulser's opponent batting average went up to .241.
He did much better as a relief pitcher than as a starter for Altoona which was evident right from the get-go. He started the year in the bullpen and allowed just two earned runs in his first 13 outings of the season. He continued pitching well into the month of July and ended up being named an Eastern League Mid-Season All-Star. However, he tried to get back to the starting rotation by the end of the year and made three starts at the end of the season. He would end up getting hit hard pitching to a 3.60 ERA in 15 innings of work going 0-2. Moving forward, Sulser will probably make a return to the bullpen, and might even step in as the closer for Altoona. However, he will have to figure out how to out finesse these top Minor League prospects so that he can continue his progression through the Minor Leagues.
It is still uncertain as to when the 2020 MLB season is set to begin, but we at Buccos Cove are determined to continue to bring you strong content. Until the 2020 season begins, we will continue looking at the players who make up the 2020 Pirates organization and how they will impact the organization this season.
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