The Pirates dropped one on the road to the Phillies, 4-3. They’re now 1-5-2 on the spring.
Lots of lefties threw for the Bucs, but not much light got shed on the bullpen competition. The veteran lefties were a contrast. Rich Hill’s first outing went fine: two scoreless innings, one hit, one walk, two strikeouts. Jarlin Garcia, not so much. He got hit extremely hard, giving up four hits, all torched, and a walk, while recording one out. The carnage included another gopher ball and all four of the Phillies’ runs. So far, Garcia’s had one good outing and two terrible ones. He left this one due to arm tightness, which never bodes well.
The lefty hopefuls did fine. Rob Zastryzny got the last two outs of Garcia’s inning and threw one of his own. He did let one of Garcia’s runners score. Daniel Zamora added a scoreless inning.
The last three innings were taken care of by Chase De Jong and Kyle Nicolas. De Jong allowed a couple of hard hit balls, but the only runner came on an error. Nicolas threw two scoreless innings, giving up a hit and a walk. So far, the various pitching prospects have looked good.
The hitters Hainesed their way through another dreary day of futile flailing. They managed just four hits. Haines’ Hackers did pick up a walk, so there’s that.
The much-touted job competitions continued to be uninspiring, to put it mildly. Canaan Smith-Njigba was 0-for-3 but reached twice on errors, so if that’s a skill maybe he made some progress. Miguel Andujar was 0-for-3, as was Chavez Young. Connor Joe was 1-for-3 and seems to be the only outfielder (or 1B/OF/DH or whatever) who’s rising to the occasion. Tucupita Marcano went 0-for-2 with the team’s lone walk, so the second base competition remains in low gear.
The only signs of life came from Ke’Bryan Hayes, who tripled in one run, and Ji-Man Choi, who drove in the other two with a sacrifice fly and a double. Hayes seems to be swinging the bat well so far.
AND, as a bonus from Pirate City today . . .
Having followed the Pirates fanatically since 1965, Wilbur Miller is one of the fast-dwindling number of fans who’ve actually seen good Pirate teams. He’s even seen Hall-of-Fame Pirates who didn’t get traded mid-career, if you can imagine such a thing. His first in-person game was a 5-4, 11-inning win at Forbes Field over Milwaukee (no, not that one). He’s been writing about the Pirates at various locations online for over 20 years. It has its frustrations, but it’s certainly more cathartic than writing legal stuff. Wilbur is retired and now lives in Bradenton with his wife and three temperamental cats.
Don’t want to jump the gun but are you going to provide coverage of minor league Spring training? I would like to know the teams makeups and who is impressing.
I’m going to try to do a little. One problem is I’m gonna be away the last half of March. The other is, they’re really not doing much out there. I just talked to a friend who’s been out there a good bit and he’s found what I did yesterday: the activity level is the lowest we’ve ever seen by a huge margin.
I don’t know why the Pirates don’t give Cam Alldred a shot instead of all these failed LH RP. And we had a good LH RP that was able to pitch multiple innings and was tough on LH hitters: Joe Jacques.
The only one that is ok is Angel Perdomo. CalebSmith/Zamora/Zastryzny all aren’t good options at all; same with Chatwood.
Just release them now. Keep Perdomo and Alldred as AAA/AAAA LHP options. With LHP’s Tyler Samaniego, Nick Dombkowski and Omar Cruz not far behind.
JcFlowers, Tahnaj Thomas, Blake Cederlind, Cody Bolton, Nate Webb, Hunter Stratton, Bido, Noe Toribio is a fine AAA bullpen. With Selby, Yohan, and Moreta on the 40 man and in AAA too.
Peggy’s throwing error was not just a little off the mark……he nearly threw it into the stands over 1B head. This only strengthens the case for Owings making the 26.
Please no!
There is no case for Owings making anything. He has a career wRC+ of 69, career fWAR of -0.6, and he’s a below average defender, well below at short
One bad throw doesn’t outweigh ten years of failure. And Peguero isn’t in the competition anyway.
Castro and Bae are more than capable of playing acouple games at SS when Cruz needs a rest. If Cruz goes down then they need to make a move.
Maybe Triolo, Maggi, Andres Alvarez or Leyba get the call up to play SS then.
Garcia leaves game with arm trouble. Zas pitched well. This may open the door for he or Caleb Smith or Perdoma. The Rule 5 looks like a LH lock.
My preferences:
Perdomo
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Zastrynsky
Smith
Are we sure there aren’t some guys on the scrapheap that wouldn’t be better fits?
Getting that were not good at hitting vibe again, but it’s early .
Yep, only the last 3 consecutive years of sub-.400 Winning Percentages.
I don´t think Choi realizes he is being beat out of his job by Joe and Swaggerty
Everything I have seen in interviews from Choi so far tells me he is not long for this team
If we release Choi before March 31, we are not on the hook for his salary, correct?
they should just do it now so he can go play for Korea in the WBC
Andujar looked fairly lost in left field.
So . . . he plays LF like he hits.
I was thinking the same thing but I didn’t want it to seem like I was piling it on, lol.
them there Pirates ain’t very good at this baseball stuff.
I got to watch it on the local Phillie channel. Nicolas had two scoreless innings but he seemingly had no clue where the ball was going. Delay (I think) was reaching all over the place.
Triolo and Nicky G had two hard hit outs, so if that counts for anything, there you have it. TSwag made a nice running catch in CF.
But, I never got the feeling that Haines’ Hackers were going to tie it up unless they got lucky.
Thanks for the update. Nicolas is a big K guy, so his command could wander. On the positive side though are his 3 IP, 0.00 ERA, and only 39 pitches. He pitched very well at AA last year, so, chances are he starts the year at AAA. A real positive from the Stallings trade.
I watched it in the MLB replay this morning and it seemed like he was having trouble locating his Curve. The Slider and FB were VG. Love the successive FB’s of 93, 95, 97. I was waiting for the 99, but it’s only ST! He looks very confident on the bump.