On Saturday night in the Dominican league, Edgar Santana made his winter debut. The 26-year-old right-handed pitcher, who just celebrated his birthday last Monday, has never played winter ball before. The Pittsburgh Pirates sent him to the Arizona Fall League last year, where he threw 14.1 shutout innings, which includes the two outs from his appearance in the Fall-Stars game. He made his big league debut on June 10th of this season and ended up posting a 3.50 ERA in 19 appearances, with 20 strikeouts over 18 innings.
Santana didn’t have a strong winter debut, picking up the loss. He faced three batters, allowing a single and a double, before getting a pop out to second base for his only out. Those two runs scored and it ended up coming from the “help” of some former/current Pirates. One of the two hits against him was by his first baseman at Indianapolis, Edwin Espinal. The other hit came from Diego Goris, a former Pirate prospect. The pitcher who followed Santana was Joely Rodriguez, also a former Pirate prospect, who allowed both inherited runners to score.
Santana pitched 76 innings over 63 appearances this season, so I wouldn’t expect him to put too much time in during winter ball. When you include the Arizona Fall League stats, he threw 94 innings last year, so he does have some room before he reaches last year’s innings total. However, the 63 appearances is already ten more than he had all of last year.
In Sunday’s action in the Dominican, Pablo Reyes went 0-for-2 with a walk, a run scored and an RBI on a sacrifice fly. He is 2-for-15, with three walks in six games.
In Venezuela, Elvis Escobar went 2-for-5 with a double and two runs scored. He has reached base safely in all 11 games this season and he has a .378 average. The interesting part about him being on base 23 times already, is that he has attempted just two stolen bases. Escobar has indicated that the Pirates want him to work on his base running this off-season to help his overall value. In the last three years combined, he has 29 steals and has been thrown out 36 times (doesn’t include pick-offs), which is unacceptable for a player who has slightly better than average speed and below average power.
In Mexico, Carlos Munoz went 0-for-2 with a walk before he was pinch-hit for in the eighth inning
And finally, just because I couldn’t pass this up from Mexico last night. We usually don’t mention former players unless it’s something like the Santana note above. This was too good though. Zack Dodson threw eight shutout innings and Daniel Moskos picked up the save in their team’s 3-1 win. Quincy Latimore also plays on same team and he went 0-for-3, with a walk. Dodson helped the Winnipeg Goldeyes win an American Association title this summer. Boxscore here for your Pirates Prospects 2009-2011 throwback moment.
