The Week in Bradenton: Marauders' Offense Up and Down

FCL Pirates go 2-3

Richard Ramirez Photo Credit: WTM

The Bradenton Marauders split six games this week against a pretty good Jupiter team. They finished the week with a 12-inning win in which backup catcher Justin Miknis was the winning pitcher after getting the last out of the top of the 12th.

On offense, the Marauders continued to mirror the parent team: They remain one of their league’s weakest hitting teams, but when they do anything, it tends to come from home runs in bunches.

Esmerlyn Valdez emerged from the IL, following a beaning, to go deep three times in his first two games back. Unfortunately, he followed that with a 1-for-11 stretch. Still, his 12 home runs are tied for third in the league.

Axiel Plaz continued to hit for power while also hitting better all-around as he gets his average safely above the Mendoza Line. He went 7-for-17 with a double and two home runs, leaving him tied with Valdez with a dozen despite the fact that he’s played only a little over half the season.

Plaz’s path forward remains a bit of a puzzle. He’s an 18-year-old putting up some of the best Statcast data in the low minors, and he’d be leading his league in slugging by a wide margin if he had the plate appearances to qualify. But he’s started only 15 of his 41 games behind the plate. Obviously, that’s a result of the presence of Omar Alfonzo, a legit-catching prospect himself. You’d think, though, that the Pirates would be desperate to get Plaz established at a premium defensive position, one where he still has very limited experience and definitely needs work. Scouts don’t like players with short, squat builds, and they don’t like low-minors first basemen. Plaz could be at risk of being undervalued. In fact, it seems like he already is.

Speaking of Alfonzo, he also had a big week, launching three long balls and also going 7-for-17. He had strikeout problems in June, fanning 25 times in 82 ABs. He’s cut back on that a little in July, with ten in 38 ABs.

The Bradenton pitching could have been better. They allowed 31 runs in the six games. One big issue for them all year has been walks. They have the league’s third-highest walk rate despite the staff being an average age. A lot of that has come from four pitchers who’ve taken regular turns while walking at or over a batter an inning: Hunter Furtado (8.8 BB/9), Carlos Jimenez (9.8), Luigi Hernandez (8.7) and Tyler Kennedy (17.1!).

Over the weekend, though, three of the Marauders’ wild men managed to find the plate. On Saturday, Jimenez threw six shutout innings, allowing two hits and just one walk while fanning seven. On Sunday (the game Miknis won), Hernandez walked just one in four shutout innings, although he hit two. Furtado followed with three scoreless innings, walking one. So maybe there is some hope for progress.

The FCL Bucs lost two of five as their offense cooled off, and they continued to have relief problems. It didn’t help that Tony Blanco, Jr., is back on IL-7. I don’t know what any of the injuries have been, but he never goes long without one.

One guy who didn’t cool off was Richard Ramirez. He went through a 1-for-21 streak, but he broke out of it by finishing the week with a 6-for-10 stretch, including two doubles and two home runs. That brought his OPS back to .859. He also showed off his arm, which FanGraphs rates, or possibly underrates, at a 60. In the first three innings of one game, Ramirez threw out five baserunners. His receiving does need work. That’s true of all of the Pirates’ lower-level catchers, none of whom is actually catching more than half the time.

The FCL team, in fact, has three catchers now, with Ramirez, Luke Scherrer (who has a .752 OPS), and a rehabbing Garret Forrester. The injury to Forrester was especially bad timing because he was hot at the plate when it happened. On his rehab so far, he has just two singles in 16 ABs.

On the pitching front . . . well, there isn’t much interesting on the pitching front apart from Zander Mueth. Most of all that reflects very poorly on the Pirates’ international work, which has been awful so far under Ben Cherington.

Mueth, at least, kept doing what he’s been doing, allowing just one run over five innings on Thursday. He gave up three hits and a walk and fanned five.