In Venezuela on Saturday night, Elias Diaz and Jose Osuna helped lead their team to a tenth straight win. That was after they started the season with a 9-24 record. Diaz went 2-for-4 with his third homer(shown below) and his third double. Osuna went 3-for-4 with a walk, two runs scored, and three singles, which extended his hitting streak to nine games. Diaz caught his 13th game of the winter and he has still allowed just one stolen base in five attempts. He is hitting .271 in 48 at-bats.
In that same game, there was a couple batter/pitcher match-ups of note. Julio Vivas returned to his team after the Pirates shut him down because they didn’t want him pitching in the Parallel League(Venezuelan minor league), but Vivas was struggling, so his team wanted him to get some innings in non-league games. After two weeks, he returned to Aguilas del Zulia and threw 1.1 scoreless innings on Friday. Vivas allowed a single, hit a batter, issued a walk, threw a wild pitch and made an error on a pick-off throw, so it wasn’t a pretty scoreless outing. The hit he allowed was a single by Jose Osuna and the hit batter was Elias Diaz.
A.J. Morris recorded one out in relief, while giving up two runs on two hits and a walk. He has a 3.80 ERA in 23.2 innings.
Gorkys Hernandez went 1-for-4 with a single, giving him a .313/.392/.369 slash line through 42 games.
In the Dominican, Mel Rojas Jr. went 0-for-5 in his team’s 3-2 loss in 11 innings. His average is down to .231 now, but he still leads the league with six homers.
Josh Wall won for the second day in a row and he didn’t do much either day. On Friday he won after he blew a save and on Saturday he recorded just two outs. He allowed a single and struck out a batter last night. He has 21 strikeouts in 15.2 innings.
In Mexico, Carlos Munoz went 1-for-4 with a single and a strikeout. He is hitting .292/.397/.475 in 38 games.
Sebastian Valle didn’t play on Saturday due to a rain out, but there was a bit of news. He told the local papers that he had talks with the Pirates about returning for 2016, but his agent advised him not to agree with what they offered him to come back. He has had talks with others teams, but as of Saturday, no deal was imminent. It’s possible that it was related to his chance of making the majors with the Pirates and not contract value, as Valle said that he is looking for the club that offers him the best route to the big leagues.
In Colombia on Friday, Tito Polo had a single and a walk to raise his slash line to .308/.424/.385 through 26 at-bats.
In Puerto Rico, Danny Ortiz continued his poor hitting, going 0-for-3 with a strikeout. He is batting .147 through 22 games, with a .430 OPS, which is the second worst in the league among qualified batters.
