The Altoona Curve wrapped up their 2022 season with a loss, dropping the final game of the season 9-8 against the Reading Fighting Phils. That leaves just the Indianapolis Indians as the only minor league team playing in the Pirates system.
There was a lot of hype on the Curve heading into the season, as a good amount of their top prospects began the season at Double-A. That didn’t even include one of the system’s biggest breakout stars (Matt Gorski) and the first overall pick from a year ago (Henry Davis) joining them after the season started.
With the Curve not making the playoffs (finished second half 38-30, 71-60 overall), and keeping theme with the coverage of the other two lower level teams, here’s a look at the 2022 season, by the numbers.
— The Curve flexed their hitting muscles early and often this year, leading the Eastern League in batting average while finishing third in on-base percentage, and fifth in slugging. They set a franchise mark in stolen bases this season with 160, and finished fourth in the EL in the category.
— The pitching staff also posted a sub-4 ERA (3.97), which was good for fourth in the league. That’s impressive considering they finished 10th in strikeouts, but was at least offset with the second most ground outs recorded.
— Of the seven qualified (through plate appearances), only Blake Sabol, Aaron Shackelford, Jared Triolo, and Andres Alvarez hit above the league average OPS mark of .727.
— You can either make the argument that Triolo has finished second in the league batting title in back-to-back seasons now, or that he won it by default. For the second straight year, Triolo finished second in the batting title race, but the player who was first non longer was in their respective league by season’s end. Last year Matt Fraizer had moved on to Double-A, kind of leaving Triolo to win by default. That’s the same case this year, except it’s Brett Baty that made his way up the ladder but stayed qualified at the Double-A level.
— Liover Peguero didn’t put up the best batting slash, but finished sixth in stolen bases, and picked up the fifth most hits in the EL. Triolo and Alvarez also topped 20 stolen bases, giving the Curve three players to reach that mark and also three to make the top 10 in that category.
— One last interesting set of numbers, Ethan Hullihen posted out a spreadsheet of who played what position this season and how many games at each.
Altoona, if you're so inclined: pic.twitter.com/YacO0Rnb67
— Ethan Hullihen (@EthanHullihen) September 18, 2022
It’s a good look at who played where, and who they had move around, something the Pirates put an emphasis this season.
Could Be Saying Something, Could Not
We know that the Pirates are going to bring some players up from Altoona to Indianapolis with Triple-A in their last week of the season. For what it’s worth, it could be telling that Endy Rodriguez, Matt Gorski, and Liover Peguero were all given Sunday off, which would be weird with it being the last game of the season — it could also very much mean they will be making the move to Indianapolis this week.
The pitchers would be less clear, but the Curve did go with a bullpen game on Sunday, freeing up most any pitcher to make the jump come Tuesday.
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