BRADENTON, Fla. – The Pirates were originally scheduled to host the Phillies’ Class-A teams at Pirate City today, but for some reason that didn’t happen. Instead, the Pirates’ Triple-A squad met the Double-A squad in an intrasquad game that featured Jameson Taillon going four innings against the Triple-A hitters.
The lineups still contained a number of players who’ll probably end up a level or so lower. The Triple-A team lined up as:
- Alen Hanson, 3B
- Adam Frazier, CF
- Max Moroff, 2B
- Josh Bell, 1B
- Willy Garcia, RF
- Barrett Barnes ,LF
- Jin-De Jhang, C
- Dan Gamache, DH
- Juan Diaz, SS
The Double-A lineup:
- Kevin Newman, SS
- Kevin Kramer, 2B
- Chase Simpson, 3B
- Jerrick Suiter, 1B
- Taylor Gushue, C
- Logan Hill, LF
- Daniel Arribas, DH
- Trace Tam Sing, RF
- Michael Fransoso, CF
Taillon had an up and down outing. He fanned seven in his four innings, but his location wasn’t always the best. He ended up allowing four runs on five hits and two walks. The walks came to the second and third hitters he faced — Frazier and Moroff — and cost him one run. He also allowed a pair of drives to deep left-center by the left-handed hitting Jhang, one of which went for a double and the other of which was caught. Opposite field hitting, in fact, was a constant theme throughout the game.
The last run off Taillon came on a home run by Barnes. On the positive side, Taillon threw 39 of his 57 pitches for strikes, including seven of eight curves and 11 of 15 changeups. That’s a lot of changeups, and he said when he went down that he was told to focus on the pitch, so it’s obvious that’s what he was working on today. This may have contributed to him getting hit around a little. The other thing that was said when he was sent down was that he needed more work against upper level hitting, and that’s another factor to consider today.
Wilfredo Boscan started against the Double-A players and breezed through two innings. In his third inning, though, Newman walked and Kramer lined an opposite-field single, followed by a three-run bomb to left-center by the switch-hitting Simpson, batting left.
Boscan was followed by lefty Cody Dickson, who allowed two runs, one earned, in two-plus innings. Dickson walked one and fanned two. He had a little more trouble with the strike zone than Taillon, throwing 29 of 48 pitches for strikes. That included six of twelve changeups, so he might have been focusing on the pitch, too.
Much of the damage done by the hitters went the opposite way. Frazier had a triple to deep left-center and Taylor Gushue, a switch-hitter batting right-handed, had a double down the right field line. Hanson and Jhang had opposite field hits. Logan Hill bucked the trend by pulling a double down the left field line.
There weren’t many noteworthy defensive plays. Bell had a nice backhanded stop on a hard grounder by Newman. On the negative side, Garcia muffed a fly by Gushue for a three-base error.
Most of the players were very aggressive on the bases. Frazier, Moroff, Hanson and Kramer attempted steals of second at every opportunity. Frazier also filched a run by scoring from second when the defense failed to turn a double play.
