In Venezuela on Saturday night, Jose Osuna made his winter debut a little later than usual. In the past, Osuna has played winter ball since the start of the season in Venezuela, which is usually during the second week of October. This year, the Pittsburgh Pirates wanted him to take a rest after the regular season before playing winter ball. On top of that, Osuna has indicated that he will be limited to one month of action, although he hopes to play in the playoffs if Bravos de Margarita earns a postseason spot. He will also be playing some third base this winter, possibly as early as today’s game. On Saturday, he was the designated hitter and went 1-for-4 with a single in his first at-bat and a run scored.
In the Dominican, Starling Marte went 0-for-3 with a strikeout, before leaving for a pinch-hitter in the sixth inning. The game was 3-1 at the time, but there were no indications of an injury and nothing has been reported, so we will see later on today if there was a reason he left besides the fact he has a .566 OPS through 13 games.
Jung-Ho Kang also went 0-for-3 with a strikeout. He’s hitting .132/.216/.197 through 22 games and leads the league with 27 strikeouts.
Pablo Reyes went 1-for-1 with a single and a run scored. In his other three plate appearances, he walked, was hit by a pitch and put down a sacrifice bunt. He is hitting .222/.306/.270 through 21 games.
Anderson Feliz went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. He has an .803 OPS through 18 games.
In Mexico, Christian Navarro picked up his first winter hit, singling as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning of his team’s 8-0 win. This was the first time in nine games that he got to play defense, spending the final two innings in left field. His first eight games included five turns as a pinch-runner and three pinch-hit appearances.
Carlos Munoz went 1-for-4 with a double, a walk and a run scored. He has a .262/.368/.350 slash line through 32 games.
In Australia on Sunday, Jin-De Jhang went 2-for-4 with a run scored and his fourth RBI in three games. After throwing out a runner stealing yesterday, he picked a runner off of first base on Sunday. Jhang homered during Saturday’s doubleheader.
Michael Suchy went 0-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch and a run scored. He is 3-for-13 in four games, with a double and a homer.
Finally, we lost a good one for our winter coverage. As mentioned yesterday morning, Edwin Espinal signed with the Detroit Tigers, which means he won’t be part of our daily articles anymore. This was his fourth season of winter ball, so he really helped fill out articles over the years. Espinal has appeared in 594 articles (including this one) over the years on this site, starting back on May 30, 2011 when I recapped his pro debut. I’m sure he will at least be mentioned in passing in some upcoming articles, especially if he ends up on Toledo (Tigers Triple-A club) next year and is facing Indianapolis often.
