The Pittsburgh Pirates play a split-squad doubleheader today. The home game will be televised on AT&T SportsNet and they will take on the Detroit Tigers. The road game will be against the Philadelphia Phillies and it can be heard on 93.7 The Fan. Both games begin at 1:05 PM.
Home vs Tigers
- JT Riddle, 2B
- Colin Moran, 3B
- Gregory Polanco, DH
- Will Craig, 1B
- Luke Maile, C
- Jason Martin, CF
- Socrates Brito, RF
- Oneil Cruz, SS
- Charlie Tilson, LF
Derek Holland is starting. He will be followed by Steven Brault, Richard Rodriguez, Sam Howard, Keone Kela, Robbie Erlin and Tom Koehler.
Cole Tucker, Jason Delay and Christian Kelley will be among the bench players. Both games will include pitchers and hitters over from the minor league side.
Road at Phillies
- Kevin Newman, SS
- Kevin Kramer, 2B
- Jose Osuna, 1B
- Phillip Evans, DH
- John Ryan Murphy, C
- Ke’Bryan Hayes, 3B
- Jared Oliva, CF
- Jake Elmore, LF
- Bligh Madris, RF
Trevor Williams gets the start. He will be followed by Hector Noesi, Cody Ponce, Nick Burdi, Blake Weiman, Montana DuRapau and JT Brubaker. Arden Pabst is the only bench player listed, which likely means that all of the rest will be minor league players. It’s very likely that no one is playing full games this early in spring.
I don’t have the exact list of who is going where, but I know that the Pirates have added the following minor league players to the active roster today, in addition to Bligh Madris listed above:
Ji-Hwan Bae
Mason Martin
Deon Stafford
Matt Eckelman
Ethan Goforth
Dylan Shockley
Mitchell Tolman
Chris Sharpe
Daniel Amaral
Raul Hernandez
Plus they are bringing along Tsung-Che Cheng, the 18-year-old Taiwanese shortstop signed back in July for $380,000. He was featured in our article as one of their top ten signings to watch from the 2019-20 international signing class. Cheng is with the road team today.
