Sunday turned out to be the best day we have seen so far this winter for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Every one of their hitters who played, contributed with the bat.
In the Dominican, Starling Marte went 2-for-5 with a single, double and his third RBI. He is 3-for-16 through four games.
Pablo Reyes came into the game as a defensive replacement at second base in the eighth inning and then he doubled in his lone at-bat. He is hitting .200/.298/.250 through 40 at-bats.
Jung-Ho Kang went 2-for-4 with a single, double, run scored and two RBIs. Coming into the day, 32 players had enough plate appearances to qualify for league leaders. Kang ranked 31st in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS. He ranked 32nd in OBP and led the league with 19 strikeouts. Despite the nice day at the plate, the stats actually looked worse now because players dropped off of the list on Sunday when they didn’t play and fell below the minimum plate appearances. Kang now ranks last in all three slash line categories (obviously OPS as well) and he still leads with 20 strikeouts.
Edwin Espinal went 2-for-4 with a single, his first double of the winter and an RBI. He is hitting .341/.460/.439 through 13 games. He ranks fourth in the Dominican in average, third in OPS and first in OBP.
Anderson Feliz went 2-for-4 with a double. He’s 8-for-19 after being used strictly as a pinch-runner in his first four games.
In Venezuela, Elvis Escobar went 1-for-3 with an RBI single. He is hitting .284/.333/.330 in 22 games.
In Mexico, Carlos Munoz went 1-for-2 with two walks. His hit was an RBI triple and he scored a run. Munoz is hitting .318/.418/.424 in 21 games.
I didn’t forget the Colombian league, they just haven’t posted any stats yet through three games. I can tell you that 17-year-old shortstop prospect Francisco Acuna has started all three of his team’s games. The website for the Colombian league was slow to upload stats at the beginning of last year as well, so give it time.
