The Pittsburgh Pirates have cut eight more players today. The players are as follows.
Casey Sadler
Collin Balester
Gift Ngoepe
Jeremy Bleich
Willy Garcia
Alen Hanson
Mel Rojas Jr.
Jameson Taillon
Taillon, Hanson and Sadler have all been optioned to Indianapolis, while Garcia has been optioned to Altoona. The other four players have been reassigned to minor league camp. There are now 49 players in major league camp.
No real surprises here, which is going to be the theme this Spring. From the prospect side, Taillon, Garcia, Hanson, and Rojas all have zero days of service time, and all have a future with the big league club. Tomorrow is the deadline to send down guys with zero service time and avoid placing them on the MLB disabled list if they have an injury in big league camp. So it makes sense that these guys went down today.
Taillon will continue his rehab progression, throwing his next live batting practice tomorrow at Pirate City. At this point he won’t make it into games until the end of Spring Training, and will open the season in extended Spring Training.
The writing was on the wall for Sadler last night. He threw one inning in relief, and after the game I asked Clint Hurdle if he was still in consideration for a starting role. Hurdle said they still wanted him as a starter, but that they were running out of innings. He was cut today so that he could go to minor league camp and get stretched out.
I’ll have more on Garcia, Hanson, Rojas, and comments from Neal Huntington in a later article.