44 Comments
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pskell02's avatar

The hell happened with Escotto? He's finally starting to show his upside.

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WTM's avatar

Unfortunately, he also tried to show his uppercut.

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pskell02's avatar

With a teammate or opposing player?

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pskell02's avatar

Just saw it. Glad he didn't connect. No need to be suspended with a broken hand.

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1979andCounting's avatar

Griffin can definitely hit a FB, but there's a long way to go, referencing his Golden Sombrero a few games ago.

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Melkel's avatar

He's going to get a lot of offspeed and breaking pitches, hopefully we can watch him adjust and keep taking steps forward. Being able to catch up with mid 90's heat is a good sign though.

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Tim McKeon's avatar

Maybe if I’m lucky he’ll be in Greensboro for the 2nd half of the season.

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Tim McKeon's avatar

Griffin that is, I’m the Ben Cherington middle infielder of posting comments.

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bmcferren's avatar

here we go tank!

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WTM's avatar

That’s Bumbling Ben’s line.

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Tim McKeon's avatar

Good one! I saw Ross was catching (last night?).

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WTM's avatar

Davis up.

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JRC21's avatar

According to the P-G there’s a possibility that he’ll be placed on the taxi squad, pending further evaluation of the Bart injury.

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Melkel's avatar

I guess either Bart or Cruz to the IL, if not who gets optioned or dfa'd?

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PirateRican21's avatar

Should start behind the plate with a lefty on the mound, Endy to 1b.

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Hoptown's avatar

Bednar in AAA. 3 IP. 0 H. 0 BB. 5 K.

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AdministrativeSky236's avatar

Would love to know what it looks like, is he landing pitches for strikes etc

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StatsCbl's avatar

That tells me when keep him out of high leverage situations for a while.

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JRC21's avatar

He has not been closing in Indy. They’ve been using him in random middle innings.

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Scott Kliesen's avatar

If Bart has to go on IL, up comes Davis. And more importantly, our once vaunted Catching depth is stressed.

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TNBucs's avatar

The lack of depth at C isn't much different than our lack of depth at just about every position. Shelton's postgame comments seemed focused on who they were missing and no doubt Cruz, Gonzales, and Horwitz should help when they return. But their replacements need to step up. Frazier did last night, but that's been the exception.

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Goodtymes31's avatar

The biggest issue with the depth, is they’ve developed literally no one, not one position player who could be knocking on the door ready to come up and help. It’s crazy just how pathetic their efforts to try and develop literally any bat has been. You’d think even if I was running the minor league system for 6 years, with no idea what I was doing, that I’d accidentally have one guy end up good enough to play in the majors

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JRC21's avatar

I’ve been thinking about this as it relates to the outfield. They don’t have a single outfield prospect they can call up and relieve the absurd shortage at the major league level.

I think I post this once a year, but in 1972 the New York Times did a spring training article on the Pirates’ absurd outfield depth coming off their championship. Their major league outfield was Stargell, Oliver, and Clemente. Meanwhile at AAA they had Parker and Zisk knocking on the door.

The gist of the article was that almost every other team in the majors would have Parker ro Zisk or both in their starting outfield. But, not the Bucs. No room.

Those were the days.

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

Only if you are creative enough to find a ballerina for a minor league hittting instructor.

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Melkel's avatar

It's all about balance and body control lol

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

Apparently it's all about "The Move... ."

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Melkel's avatar

Keeping them on their toes

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StatsCbl's avatar

You are hired!

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StatsCbl's avatar

I think if you take the salaries of all of the IL players on the Pirates, it is around 6million. I'm guessing that is far below the league average. The injuries are just part of baseball in the 2020s. The Yankees have nearly 100 million dollars worth of players on the IL. I'm not feeling sorry for the Yankees, but I'm not feeling sorry for an owner that doesn't spend either.

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

Well... they traded away a starting pitcher and 2 prospects for an injured player whom they knew was injured, so some of this is a self-inflicted wound. I do not feel sorry for them about that.

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Al Oliver's avatar

Horwitz stated this injury is new to him, and flared up after he was traded. But I know that these days some people just keep stating false info if it fits their agenda.

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

"Horwitz had some symptoms with the Blue Jays last season, which the Pirates knew about before acquiring him from the Guardians on Dec. 10 for Luis Ortiz and pitching prospects Michael Kennedy and Josh Hart."

https://www.mlb.com/news/spencer-horwitz-wrist-injury

Yeah... I just make stuff up.

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Catch22's avatar

Curious of why you left out the part of a new injury to the tendon in the wrist was identified?

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Chris Chapman's avatar

Bryan Reynolds’ k rate is over 31% way up over his career rate. Early season anomaly or more serious issue?

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NMR's avatar

Contact rate is only down about a percentage point from last year and plate discipline intact. >30% won’t hold up over a larger sample. One big difference seems to be he’s getting fed about 10% more sliders early on this season.

Larger trend is substantial, though, with year on year declines in contact rate since 2021.

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TNBucs's avatar

My guess is that the high rate is related to the injury, directly and indirectly. Directly in that Reynolds thrives by his swing being in perfect sync and surely even an injury that doesn't prevent him from batting would affect that. Indirectly in that he's not used to being a DH.

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

Yeah... he's playing hurt. Not much point in looking at statistics or metrics or whatever.

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Catch22's avatar

How are you certain that his injury is affecting his hitting?

Reading some of your posts it’s like you have intimate knowledge of the situations.

Or it could be you’re just highly opinionated and that’s ok.

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

It's a variable, which you cannot isolate and remove from the equation that generates the current metrics. Therefore, you cannot use the current metrics in comparison with previous, which did not contain this variable. This is basic logic and scientific thinking.

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Catch22's avatar

More like basic bullshitting

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Aurorus Borealus's avatar

Obviously you are in bad mood and just want to argue, which is your custom when the Pirates are losing. I will try to explain this anyway.

By comparing his stats or metrics or whatever from when he is playing injured to when he is not playing injured, you are assuming that the injury does not affect his play. By stating that you cannot make this comparison, I am assuming nothing, because I don't know how the injury is affecting his play. It is not I who am being opinionated and making assumptions. It is you.

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