Bucs on Deck Yearly Recap: Favorite Articles of 2024
A look back at some of my favorite articles from 2024
As we wrap up the first full year here at Bucs on Deck, I wanted to recap some of my favorite articles from 2024.
Thanks to my trips to Bradenton and Greensboro, I talked to two managers and multiple players, who helped me write today’s article. I’m still learning/improving on the whole process of interviewing and then formatting them into features for you all to read, but I feel like I took some great strides in it in 2024.
For the most part, they are very ‘on the field’ focused but went in another direction a few times, and one of them ended up as perhaps my favorite of the year.
Khristian Curtis is a prospect I’ve been high on for a while, and I had a chance to sit down and talk to him while I was in Bradenton. While I learned a lot about what kind of pitcher he is on the mound, I learned a crazy story about how close he was to being unable to play baseball professionally.
A surgery gone wrong that eventually turned to a second, and the aftereffects he was still feeling when I talked to him in May.
Carlson Reed was named the site’s breakout player of the year, as voted by a couple of the writers here. I talked to him while I was in Greensboro and saw him pitch twice (once in Bradenton, another in Greensboro) during the season.
You could see the improvements, especially in the control the second time around, and he took a perfect game deep into his start.
He attributed much of his success in 2024 to keeping his reliever mindset even as a member of the rotation. Reed was the closer for West Virginia, although he did make a few starts.
Keeping the ‘one batter at a time’ mindset put him in a position to finish with the second most strikeouts in the system behind only Bubba Chandler.
I made a second article out of my conversation with Reed, going over some changes he’s made to his pitch arsenal over the course of his life. He threw a curveball early on before switching after getting to WVU, but his change-up has always been his favorite secondary offering.
We also talked about some changes he made to his fastball after getting drafted by the Pirates to try and help it play better.
One thing you learn quickly, mainly because it’s talked about often, about prospects is learning how to deal with failure, which is just as significant a factor in how they pan out as their skill set.
Failure will happen to everyone in baseball; how you deal with it will determine if you succeed in the long term.
One player who dealt with some failure early was Alessandro Ercolani, who was rocked for nine earned runs in 2.1 innings against Greenville on May 22. Young for the level (turned 20 after the season started), Ercolani bounced back to post a strong season.
I talked to Greensboro Blake Butler about Eroclani and what made him such an intriguing young pitcher in the Pirates’ system.
Some of the results haven’t quite been there for Termarr Johnson early in his professional career. Watching him play and then talking to Blake Butler, you can see some of the traits that made him such a high pick and coveted prospect in the 2022 draft.
His ability to work the count and force pitchers to throw him something he wants is far beyond his years, and sometimes, it seems like a matter of time until it all comes together.
If you’ve read my work for any amount of time, you know that I’ve been high on Omar Alfonzo for quite some time now. He emerged as one of the better hitting prospects in the system, finishing the year in Greensboro.
I talked to him there and got a chance to go over his 2024 season from both the offensive and defensive points of view.
I talked to him about his work behind the plate, and something interesting came up. We discussed the difference between catching with the automated strike zone in Bradenton and then without it after the promotion to Greensboro.
He also talked about his 2024 season at the plate, hitting one of his goals in playing 100 games, what he learned in Winter League, and how he deals with a slump.
Even though I’ve started to expand into player features with me now traveling to games, I feel like my bread and butter is still the player breakdowns. It started my rise through my original site (Murphy Sports Blog), P2, and eventually here.
Easily my favorite from 2024 was Nick Yorke, who the Pirates acquired from the Boston Red Sox for Quinn Priester.
I was a fan of Yorke after reading about him in the draft, and it was a very fun breakdown to go through. I feel it came out really well.
There were so many articles I wrote over the past year, too many to put here, but these are the ones that stood out when reflecting on some of my work.
I’ve mentioned it before and will continue to do so, but all of these aren’t possible without all those you have subscribed to and supported the site.
Thank you for all you do, and I look forward to sitting back and doing this again at the end of 2025.
The final line about Termarr, "it seems like a matter of time until it all comes together "
Right there with you!
One of his first few at bats in Altoona, he flew out fairly deep to center. He missed it by millimeters, from being a homerun. With his plate discipline, zone awareness, and his age, I'm still high on him perfecting his swing and in zone contact. He can become a special hitter at the highest level. I think he makes it to Indy before his 21st birthday.
Hoping for continued improvements of control for Reed, Ercolani and Curtis.
All great articles, but nothing about the article on the Dots Miller book being released? How was that not everyone's favorite? :)