Arizona Fall League: Jack Brannigan homers in last game for Salt River
Loss eliminates Salt River from potential playoff game.
It was the last guaranteed game for the Salt River Rafters, who needed a win and likely some help to keep their season going.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t capitalize on a four-run fourth inning, losing to the Peoria Javelinas 10-8. Jack Brannigan got the rally underway, hitting a two-run home run in the fourth to tie the game at three.
Justice Bigbie hit a two-run home run to give the Rafters the lead, which they immediately surrendered in the bottom of the inning.
It wasn’t an ideal fall number-wise for Brannigan, but he finished with four home runs. Jase Bowen cooled off towards the end of the schedule but still finished with an OPS of .855 after going 1-5 in the finale. He also swiped his sixth bag of the season as well on Thursday.
His single in the sixth scored Bigbie and Sterlin Thompson.
It seems that the Pirates’ early focus during the offseason will be on pitching, at least according to Ben Cherington during the GM Meetings.
That shouldn’t be a surprise, as pitching is the team’s biggest need during the offseason. Most of the games the Pirates played at the end of the year were more or less bullpen games, with the only actual ‘starters’ being Mitch Keller and Johan Oviedo.
They have several prospects knocking on the door, and a few who saw some time in the majors are still trying to establish themselves as major league starting pitchers.
But bringing in one, maybe two, starting pitchers can help build some depth to try and avoid what happened last year.
I talked about some names that were ‘predicted’ to land with the Pirates the other day.
There is still time to send in your questions for our new mailbag feature, which I plan on doing on Mondays during the off-season. That will probably change during the season since we do our 10 observations feature on Monday.
Send your questions to bucsondeckqa@gmail.com.
ERod and lugo for ~30M a year over the next few while our roster is mostly very cheap. Would rather they shoot the wad on some better pitching and go lower on 1B than the reverse