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Prospect Watch

Pirates Prospect Watch: Khristian Curtis Strikes Out Nine in Six Shutout Innings

Khristian Curtis had the best start of his professional career on Saturday, leading the Bradenton Marauders to a 4-1 win. Curtis pitched six shutout...

Pirates Prospect Watch: Charles McAdoo Extends Hitting Streak to Ten Games

Charles McAdoo extended his hitting streak to ten games on Friday, in Greensboro's 14-5 victory. McAdoo went 2-for-5, knocking in three runs and also...

Pirates Prospect Watch: Braxton Ashcraft Looked Great in Triple-A Debut

Braxton Ashcraft looked great in his Triple-A debut. The right-hander allowed one run in six innings of work. He allowed three hits, no walks,...

Player Features

Pirates Prospects Player Features

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Hall of Fame Push for the Deacon

The following is from Pirates Prospects contributor John Dreker, as part of his ongoing Pirates History feature. The feature focuses on the history of...

Winter League Playoff Wrap Up

Catching up with a few days' worth of winter league playoff results:

PUERTO RICAN LEAGUE
Criollos de Caguas  7,  Leones de Ponce  5  --  
Los Criollos won the Puerto Rican League championship with a win in Game 7 of the series.  Los Leones got onto the scoreboard first, scratching out a run in the top of the 1st.  Los Criollos took a 4-1 lead in the 3rd, with an RBI double and a 3-run homer.  Ponce answered with their own 3-run homer in the top of the 4th, tying the game.  Each team scored one run in the 5th.  Ponce loaded the bases with a walk and two singles, then had their run forced in with a walk.  Los Criollos scored when SS Luis Figueroa led off with a single, raced to third on another single, and scored on a sacrifice fly.  After two quiet innings, Los Criollos rallied again in the bottom of the 8th.  A single and a fielding error put two runners on base, and a fly out and a stolen base moved both runners into scoring position.  A line drive into right field for a single drove in the go-ahead run and an insurance run.  


MEXICAN PACIFIC LEAGUE
Algodoneros de Guasave   5,  Yaquis de Obregon  4  --  
Los Yaquis took the early lead with a 2-run homer in the 2nd and a solo homer in the 3rd.  They scored a 4th run in the 5th inning.  Guasave got their offense going in the 5th inning with 2 runs, then tied the score with a pair of solo homers, including one by 1B Yurendell de Caster in the 8th.  De Caster also singled in the game.  In the top of the 9th, Gusave scored the winning run on a throwing error by the Obregon shortstop.  That tied the series at 3 games each, and forced a seventh game.

Yaquis de Obregon   5,  Algodoneros de Guasave  2  --  A 4-run 4th inning pushed Los Yaquis over Guasave.  A lead-off homer, plus 3 more runs and a 2-RBI single drove in those 4 runs.  Both of Guasave's runs came on solo homers by Marshal McDougall.  The win gave the championship to Obregon.  

Meeting with Maholm, Huntington and Coonelly

As I am sure you have seen on a few other sites, the Pirates invited a few of us bloggers to PirateFest Friday night for a chance to pick the brains of Frank Coonelly, Neal Huntington and Paul Maholm. I am not going to go too in-depth, but I thought I would touch on a few subjects that came up.

Piratefest 2011 – Backstage Blogger Q&A (2 of 2)

Click here to read part one. As the 7 p.m. General Public Q&A was starting to wind down, I made my way to side of...

Piratefest 2011 – General Public Q&A (1 of 2)

On Friday, I went down to the Convention Center to represent Pirates Prospects at Piratefest 2011. The goal was to take in the general...

Luis Heredia to Start in GCL

Dejan Kovacevic reports that top Mexican pitching prospect Luis Heredia will start his career in the Gulf Coast League in 2011.  That's a somewhat...

Pirates to Sign Joe Beimel

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been looking for left handed relief, although the market is currently very thin, with very few options remaining.  One of...

I Just Realized…

This past Sunday, January 23rd, marked the second "birthday" of Pirates Prospects.  On January 23rd, 2009, I opened the site, which at the time...

Keith Law’s Prospect Rankings

Keith Law has released his top 100 prospects in baseball, along with his organizational top 10 prospects, both on ESPN Insider. In the top 100,...

RBIs For Milledge and Gimenez; Two Homers For Latimore

Ten weeks until Opening Day for the minor league season....  just in case anyone besides me is counting.

Three playoff games on Wednesday evening, plus the Australians begin their playoffs early on Thursday morning.  I'll be away from the computer for a couple of days, but we'll catch up after that.

PUERTO RICAN LEAGUE
Criollos de Caguas  7,  Leones de Ponce  2  --  
Los Criollos forced a seventh game with a win over Los Leones.  Caguas broke a 1-1 tie with 2 runs in the top of the 4th, on a hit batter and a pair of RBI doubles.  That 3-1 score lasted until the top of the 9th, when JR Rodriguez took the mound in relief for Ponce.  Rodriguez had an uncharacteristically tough night, giving up a single and a walk, and then having a batter reaches on a fielding error to load the bases.  Then Caguas' 3B Rey Navarro smashed a grand slam to seal Los Leones' fate.  Ponce added one more run with a single, a walk, and a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 9th.  The final game of the series will be played on Friday night.

 
VENEZUELAN LEAGUE
Tigres de Aragua  8,  Caribes de Anzoategui  4  --  
Los Tigres won their first game of the championship series tonight, with both LF Lastings Milledge and 1B Hector Gimenez contributing an RBI.  The game began in a shaky way for Los Tigres, as the first three Caribes' batters in the top of the first all walked, then a run scored on a sacrifice fly.  A solo home run began the top of the 2nd for Los Caribes, and a single and a double added another run.  Los Tigres got going in the bottom of the 2nd with a double and a   fielding error, then an RBI double by Milledge and a sacrifice fly by Gimenez.  Aragua tied the score at 3-3 in the bottom of the 5th with two walks, including one by CF Jorge Cortes, and an RBI single.  Los Caribes went ahead with a solo homer in the top of the 6th, but Los Tigres tied it again in the bottom of the frame with three singles, one by Gimenez.  Aragua took a definitive lead in the 7th with a 3-run homer, then added an insurance run in the 8th with a walk, a hit batter, and an RBI single.  Wil Ledezma came out to pitch the top of the 8th for Aragua.  He walked the first batter he faced, then got a strikeout, then another walk, and was removed.  Another reliever came on to strike out the next two batters to end the inning.  

Introducing the 2011 Pirates Prospects Annual

You may have noticed that things have been kind of slow at Pittsburgh Lumber Co. the past couple months. I have not been posting regularly, and I apologize for that. However, there was a reason for this inactivity. I have been busy working on a new project, the 2011 Pirates Prospects Annual.

Should the Pirates Have More Top 50 Prospects?

The MLB.com top 50 prospect list came out yesterday, and the Pittsburgh Pirates only had one player on the list, with Jameson Taillon coming...
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