Morning Rundown: Six games remaining in Spring Training schedule
Pirates start final stretch of games in Spring schedule
After having an off day on Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Pirates get started on their final stretch of games on Wednesday with a night game against the New York Yankees.
It’s been an interesting Spring so far, with the offense clicking, leading all of baseball in home runs.
A big driving force of that has been Oneil Cruz, who currently sits in a tie for the major league lead in homers, along with Kyle Stowers of the Baltimore Orioles.
The Pirates have a total of 23 different players with home runs, 11 of which have hit multiple.
Behind Cruz, Henry Davis and Jack Suwinski both have four.
On the team pitching side, they rank 15th in ERA and 11th in strikeouts. Luis Ortiz (15), currently leads the pitching staff in strikeouts.
Hunter Strattonn has made eight relief appearances this Spring and has yet to allow an earned run. Jared Jones has pitched 11.2 innings and has also yet to allow a run.
They will face nothing but the AL East the rest of the way out, with games against the Yankees (x2), Blue Jays (x2), Orioles and Red Sox. Right now it looks like only the Orioles game will not have some sort of broadcast.
We are still finalizing some details for the season, but expect the weekly feature on the MLB Draft to continue throughout the year, right up until the draft. The day may change on it, but it’s something that I want to continue doing.
The ‘10 Observations’ feature will certainly return, which was one of the most popular articles we did last season.
Obviously the video breakdowns will be back on a more consistent basis, some weeks we will have two, depending on what is going on around the system.
Those, and any features I do from any trips I make this year, will all fall under the premium side of the content.
Speaking of premium content, with a week before Opening Day, we are running a flash sale, where you can get 30% off of a yearly subscription. We did a season kick off sale in February, but going to do one more before things really get going.
With 30%, that comes out to less than $3 per month. Grab you a subscription while you can.
A premium subscription also gets you access to our Top 25 list, with full player write ups.
For everyone who has subscribed to this point, your support has been amazing, and I’m beyond thankful.
For those who may have forgotten like I did initially, there is a game that counts going on now which you can watch at mlb.com!
I'll give my late spring training observation (maybe slight rant). I'm excited about the spring and how it may lead to a better season but feel we are a bit too infatuated over McKinney and Triolo. I love the Triolo / Peguero 2B job share as they also provide great coverage for the Cruz and Hayes days off as well as allowing Joe to slide to the OF for all RH lineups. Triolo IS a ballplayer but me over-reading posts feels we think he is Mookie Betts. With the glove he may be Mookie light.. but let's get a better sample with the bat before he is an All-Star candidate. His history is a lot of Ks and soft hit balls (hopefully some related to hamate injury). Ultimately that suggests our excitement on the offensive side may be premature. McKinney may be > Palacios however he also has 800 MLB at bats that says this is more likely a hot spring not an actual prediction for full year success. I personally wouldn't want to lose the possibility (a little better than lottery ticket) of CSNs further development(or other 40 man casualty prospects) than to add McKinney to the 40 man. I do think the last OF spot needs to be a lefty and think the current 2 choices are really 26th roster spot quality at best. If we add McKinney I think we drop Palacios and just keep it that simple. Given Palacios 'clutch' magic last year, in many ways I think that should count more than his 0-11 start and McKinneys 44 plate appearance hot streak. Would anybody be surprised if McKinney was 0 for his next 11(likely with a walk or two) given his MLB history? I'll sleep fine either way. Let's go Bucs!!