Here are a few moves from the last day in the minors.
**Luis Urena has been promoted to West Virginia from the GCL. I have an irrational prospect love for Urena. He’s a big outfielder who looks like a major leaguer, and has a lot of power potential in his bat. He goes on stretches where he crushes the ball, but then has other stretches where he looks foolish against good outside breaking balls. So far this year he has a .290/.338/.420 line in the GCL with one homer in 69 at-bats. He also has 23 strikeouts in those 69 at-bats.
The Pirates didn’t have much room for him on the GCL roster after the addition of Austin Meadows and Nick Buckner, so it’s good to see him moving up and getting a challenge. Odds are he’s only going to amount to a lower level organizational guy, but his bat is better than a lot of the other organizational guys currently in West Virginia.
**To make room for Urena, Jimmy Rider was transferred from West Virginia to Jamestown.
**Left-handed pitcher Will Kendall was transferred to Jamestown yesterday. Kendall was the 30th round pick in this year’s draft.
**Ryan Beckman was promoted from Bradenton to Altoona yesterday. Beckman returned from Tommy John surgery last month after going down in April 2012 with an elbow injury. That injury happened in Altoona, so it was expected that he’d eventually move up. In his last ten appearances with the Marauders he has a 2.40 ERA in 15 innings, with a 10:5 K/BB ratio. Beckman is a sleeper relief prospect, throwing a sinker from a sidearm delivery, giving him a ton of movement and generating a lot of ground balls.
**Jared Hughes has had his rehab transferred to Altoona.
Tim started Pirates Prospects in 2009 from his home in Virginia, which was 40 minutes from where Pedro Alvarez made his pro debut in Lynchburg. That year, the Lynchburg Hillcats won the Carolina League championship, and Pirates Prospects was born from Tim's reporting along the way. The site has grown over the years to include many more writers, and Tim has gone on to become a credentialed MLB reporter, producing Pirates Prospects each year, and will publish his 11th Prospect Guide this offseason. He has also served as the Pittsburgh Pirates correspondent for Baseball America since 2019. Behind the scenes, Tim is an avid music lover, and most of the money he gets paid to run this site goes to vinyl records.
