The Week in Bradenton: Marauders Get Back on Track
FCL Pirates continue to mash
After a hot stretch, Bradenton entered the past week on a four-game losing streak. They turned that around with a 4-2 week against Clearwater, which started the week 34-17.
The Marauders still aren’t hitting well overall, as they’re next-to-last in the league in runs. Some of their hot hitters, most notably Keiner Delgado and Eddy Rodriguez have slumped.
One guy who hasn’t, as Anthony Murphy chronicled a couple of days ago, is Braylon Bishop. Bishop finished the week hitting .254/.323/.542 with four home runs, twice as many as he hit in his first three seasons combined. His ISO this year is roughly triple what it was his first three years.
Bishop’s walk and, especially, K rates do raise some cautionary flags, but I’ve been watching him for three-plus years, and he doesn’t look like the same hitter at all. He appears now to go up, focused on hitting the ball, while previously, his focus seemed to be mainly on not swinging at anything out of the strike zone. He was alarmingly tentative, which led to large numbers of checked swings and called strikes and very little hard contact. Now, when he swings, he goes after the ball aggressively, and he’s routinely making good contact.
Another interesting hitter on the Marauders is Axiel Plaz. He’s reached Bradenton by an odd route. He played only semi-regularly in 2022-23, putting up a huge season in the DSL in 2022 and a bad one in the FCL in 2023. The irregular playing time came partly due to injuries, but I don’t think entirely.
Plaz started in the FCL this year and hit very little through eight games. He got promoted anyway due to a pair of catcher injuries and has put up a 226/318/472 line in 17 games for the Marauders. He evidently impressed the Pirates enough that when backup catcher Justin Miknis came off the injured list, the Pirates sent Miknis to the development list. Plaz’s week was a mixed bag. In three games, he went a combined 0-for-10. In the other two, he was 5-for-8 with two home runs.
The really interesting part with Plaz is a Baseball America article posted yesterday that includes him in a list of Statcast standouts. It’s behind the paywall, but the summary is that Plaz is putting up very impressive exit velocities while hitting the ball in the air. He’s still only 18 and didn’t get much experience at the rookie levels, so the possibility for significant improvement is there.
The Marauder pitching news has good news and bad news. On the latter, Michael Kennedy has hit a rough spell. Over his last five starts, Kennedy has a 5.88 ERA. He’s just getting hit harder; 30 hits in his last 26 innings, 21 in the previous 23.
Carlson Reed, on the other hand, had his best pro start on Thursday, throwing five shutout innings against the league’s second-highest-scoring team. Reed gave up two hits and a walk and fanned a career-high nine. The issue with Reed is always throwing strikes and he was a little shaky early in this one, but he breezed through the last three innings on 44 pitches after needing 43 for the first two.
Reed’s strength seems to be that hitters don’t distinguish his fastball from his slider and change terribly well. That leads to swings and misses on his four-seamer, which isn’t overpowering, generally sitting at 93-94 mph. He got seven whiffs on 16 four-seamers in the Thursday game.
The FCL Pirates continue to batter opposing pitchers. They’re third in the league in runs per game and easily tops in OPS. And they have two good arguments for breakout hitters.
One is Jhonny Severino, the Carlos Santana trade acquisition. Including Monday’s game, he’s batting .287/.387/.586 and leading the league with six home runs. Severino’s only sort of repeating the level. Due to injuries, he got into just 15 games there last year, only three after the trade.
The knock on Severino in the scouting reports was, as you’d guess, swing-and-miss. He’s not really showing that, though. He’s currently striking out at a 20.1% rate, which isn’t ideal but also not alarming by today’s standards. His walk rate is a healthy 14.2%. The Pirates have him splitting time between third and short. I can’t quite see the latter, as I don’t think he has the athleticism of, say, Yordany De Los Santos.
Another hitter making noise is catcher Richard Ramirez. He’s hitting .324/.448/.521 through Monday, with three home runs in 23 games. The strikeouts are starting to pile up at 33%, so that’s a concern. He does have a high walk rate of 16.1%. He’s also throwing out 45% of base stealers and looks very solid, at the least, behind the plate.
The pitching in the GCL hasn’t been as good, with the Bucs in the bottom half in ERA. Walks have been an issue, as they have the league’s third-worst BB/9. They do have the third-youngest staff.
The team’s top pitching prospect, Zander Mueth, has struggled lately. His ERA, 3.06, looks good, but over half the runs he’s allowed have been unearned. He has a 1.53 WHIP and 6.6 BB/9. He’s walked eight in his last 6.2 IP, so that’s a concern at the moment.
This site is 100% reader-supported, with no revenue coming from ads. If you enjoy our work, consider becoming a paid member today.
Not only will you help the site continue to grow, but you will also get access to our fantastic premium content, which includes our Top 25 rankings and full-player write-ups, video breakdowns, as well as any features that come from my on-site trips.
We have monthly and yearly plans available, with the latter coming out to an average of $4.16/month.
Javier Rivas and Carlson Reed won FSL player and pitcher of the week.
Who is Keiner Delgado? Any relation to the future home run champ of the Pirates named "Ralph" Keiner Delgado?