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Alen Hanson Promoted To Altoona

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The Pittsburgh Pirates have promoted shortstop Alen Hanson to Altoona. He left today’s Bradenton game in the fourth inning. With Bradenton, Hanson hit .281 in 92 games, with 23 doubles, eight triples, seven homers and 24 stolen bases.

Alen Hanson would be expendable, but only in a bigger deal.
Alen Hanson would be expendable, but only in a bigger deal.

Alen Hanson came into this season as the Pirates fourth rated prospect, though some people had the 20-year-old switch-hitter rated ahead of Gregory Polanco. Hanson started the season off slowly, both on defense and at the bat. He hit .255 in April, with a .654 OPS., but he only did that with a good finish to the month. Hanson was hitting .191 on April 14th, a day he made three errors in the field. He was benched to clear his head and he then took extra infield with Gary Green, the Pirates minor league infield coordinator.

Hanson batted .311 in the month of May, then .300 in June, improving his monthly OPS from .840 in May to .880 in June, thanks to showing some power. He had just one homer between April/May. Last season, Hanson hit 16 homers for West Virginia, while also collecting 33 doubles and 13 triples.

He hasn’t been as good at the plate in July with a .250 average in 20 games, however his overall stats are strong and the Pirates have no prospects ahead of him in the system. Altoona has been using Drew Maggi at shortstop recently.

Altoona has 36 games left in their season, so this move gives Hanson a chance to get just over a month of experience at AA. It also gives Altoona three of the top four prospects in the system now, with Polanco and pitcher Jameson Taillon already on the team. Hanson was rated fourth in our mid-season prospect poll, though he was passed by West Virginia pitcher Tyler Glasnow.

 

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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