The Pittsburgh Pirates wrapped up their final day at Pirate City today, and will head over to McKechnie Field tomorrow to start their game schedule. Tomorrow kicks off the schedule with the Black and Gold scrimmage, which is a five and a half inning game. I posted the rosters and the pitchers for each team earlier today.
The schedule against other teams will start on Wednesday at Toronto in Dunedin. Clint Hurdle announced the pitching rotations for each of the first three games on the schedule.
Casey Sadler will get the start on Tuesday, pitching two innings against Toronto. Sadler will be followed by one inning each from Stolmy Pimentel, Bobby LaFromboise, Rob Scahill, Brad Lincoln, Arquimedes Caminero, and Josh Wall. Tuesday’s game will be televised live by MLB Network at 1:00 PM EST. For a full list of televised games, check out our post from a few weeks ago.
On Wednesday, the Pirates will host the Blue Jays at McKechnie Field. Gerrit Cole will get the start, going two innings. He will be followed by Vance Worley, who will go two innings. After that, the Pirates will have one inning each from Radhames Liz, Tony Watson, Jared Hughes, Antonio Bastardo, and John Holdzkom.
The Pirates play the Yankees at home on Thursday. Francisco Liriano will get the start, and Charlie Morton will follow, with both pitchers throwing two innings. That will be followed by an inning each from Clayton Richard, Mark Melancon, Jeremy Bleich, Deolis Guerra, and Tyler Glasnow.
**I wrote about Jose Tabata’s new approach at the plate on Friday. I’ll have more on that in a video feature tomorrow. For now, here is a quick video of Tabata at the plate from this afternoon.
**The Pirates wrapped up their workouts today with sliding drills. Here is a close up of Jung-ho Kang sliding, giving you the view of a middle infielder at second base.
Jung-ho Kang sliding right at you #Pirates
A video posted by Pirates Prospects (@piratesprospects) on
**Speaking of Kang, Hurdle was asked about the Pirates eventually having to create a starting spot for Kang, due to the fact that they see him as an eventual starter. Hurdle refuted the idea that the Pirates would be taking someone’s job away, noting all of the possibilities, and saying they don’t have a timeline for Kang to be a starter.
“There could be a possibly injury, there could be a possible player move. We deal with free agency. There’s a lot of different things you can anticipate. We don’t have a timeline on it. We don’t have a timeframe on it.”
