Morning Rundown: Pirates play a spring training game today, Omar Cruz pitches for the Padres
Pirates open spring training schedule, former prospect in camp with Padres
The Pittsburgh Pirates open their spring training schedul today, with a 1:05 pm ET game against the Baltimore Orioles. They play their first game at LECOM the following day on Sunday, facing the Minnesota Twins.
Carmen Mlodzinski gets the start for the Pirates, with Albert Suarez on the bump for the home Orioles. The game will be televised on the MLB Network.
Our first gameday article will be published at 10 am, with our daily feature now sliding back to noon.
Former Pirates’ prospect Omar Cruz pitched a scoreless inning in relief on Friday for the San Diego Padres, his first bit of action this season.
Originally acquired in the Joe Musgrove deal, Cruz spent a couple of seasons in the Pirates’ organization until being reacquired by the Padres in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft.
He was added to the 40-man in the offseason after posting a 3.96 ERA and 118 strikeouts in 86.1 innings during the 2024 minor league season.
He threw his change-up three times (statcast says three but one was a breaking ball), and got two whiffs and a called strike (that registered his only strikeout).
Support the site by becoming a paid member, and get access to all of our premium content, including our Top 25 list with complete player write-ups and video breakdowns, which come out weekly.
It will also give access to my player feature articles from on-site trips.
We have monthly and yearly plans available, with the latter costing an average of $4.16/month.
Play ball…well kinda!
Can’t have real baseball without a month of fake baseball first.
This ST, I’m looking forward to seeing Chandler, Harrington, Burrows, and Ashcraft pitch. With the bat, I want to see Cook and York fight it out for a roster spot.
Sad to hear the new times. I liked the 0600, especially when games are played the night before. With it being a ST Schedule, those new times probably make more sense for most of the folks on the Board.
It's about time to get the clubs out again, and looking forward to some reasonably warm weather in East TN. Played for about a month and then Winter came back with a vengeance.