Pirates Prospects Daily: Bryan Reynolds Plays Left Field In His Spring Training Debut

Monday’s Spring Training game was about as close to a potential regular season lineup as we’ve seen early on, but it came with an interesting wrinkle in it: Bryan Reynolds was in left field.

Reynolds has played left field before. Although he only did it once in 2022, he’s started there 122 times since making the majors.

So, it’s nothing really new for him, but of course, since really taking over as the team’s best player, he’s been the primary center fielder.

Late in the 2022 season, he slid over to left field to allow Ji-Hwan Bae to play center field, a position the latter had been working into his repertoire for the last year plus.

Now in his first appearance of 2023, Reynolds started in left field, sliding over for Jack Suwinski, who played center before being lifted for Travis Swaggerty later in the game.

Reynolds put up the seventh worst Outs Above Average (OAA) among qualified outfielders last year on Baseball Savant, and didn’t fare much better on Fangraphs and Baseball Reference.

While it could theoretically throw another layer into any contract negotiations, the move to left could help the team when it comes to the bigger picture, as long as they find the right fit to fill in at center field.

Suwinksi generally graded out positively defensively last year, but has spent the majority of his minor league career on the corners. Swaggerty subbed in for him during the game, made two nice catches and recorded a single.

Swaggerty taking that next step and kind of emerging as an option would be huge for the organization, allowing Bae to continue to compete for the second base job or settle in as the team’s super utility player.

Outside of them, Suwinski, Ryan Vilade, and Canaan Smith-Njigba all have some experience playing center field recently and are on the 40-man roster.

Jose Hernandez Debut

Rule 5 pick Jose Hernandez made his Spring debut, walking one, striking out another across 14 pitches while averaging 97 mph on his fastball. I would like to see his slider more in games to come. It generated some swing and miss in Double-A, but overall felt like a pitch that could use some work.

Carmen Mlodzinski Pitches An Inning of Relief

The 2020 Comp A pick for the Pirates also threw an inning, striking out and walking a batter across his 22 pitches in the ninth. Mainly fastball/slider/changeup last year, his breaking ball looked like it had a lot more horizontal movement than years prior.

While it was credited as a ‘cutter’ on Baseball Savant, it had more of that ‘sweeper’ feel to it, which worked as he got whiffs on two of the three swings taken on it, with an overall 40% called strike/whiff rate.

He started to work things out towards the end of the season, and he looks to stay in the rotation picture in 2023.