51.9 F
Pittsburgh

Winter Leagues: Marte and Polanco In the Same Outfield

Published:

In the Dominican from Friday night, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco got their playoff schedule started. Their Escogido team lost 2-0 in the opener. Marte went 1-for-4 with a single, while Polanco had his toughest game of the Winter, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. The two Pirates players were in the same outfield for the first time, with Polanco in center field and Marte in left field.  Marte was the designated hitter in his three regular season games.

Starling Marte Pirates
Marte played his first Winter game in the field Friday night (Photo Credit: David Hague)

In Puerto Rico, Benji Gonzalez went 2-for-3 with a walk and hit-by-pitch. He has now reached base seven times in his last two games. Gonzalez is hitting .327 through 18 games.

From Colombia on Thursday night, Harold Ramirez went 1-for-4 with a single. He is hitting .311 through 28 games, with four doubles, three triples and seven stolen bases.

Yhonathan Barrios pitched for the first time in over three weeks and had a good outing, retiring all three batters he faced, one by strikeout. Prior to Thursday, he had troubles in each of his five previous outings, allowing a total of ten runs and 18 base runners in just three innings.

In Australia from Saturday, Danny Arribas went 1-for-3 with a single, before being pinch-hit for in the ninth inning. Arribas caught the game and allowed one stolen base in one attempt. He is hitting .177 through 22 games, with a .474 OPS.

Andrew Lambo isn’t playing this weekend and it looks like his Winter is done. Some players in Winter ball are allowed to change teams for the playoffs and in the Dominican they even have a draft, where the four playoff teams each pick four players from the two teams that didn’t make the playoffs. Lambo’s team was eliminated from the playoffs last night. If Lambo is in fact done, he finishes with a .228/.311/.337 slash line in 27 games. He has six doubles, two triples, no homers and he drove in 17 runs. Lambo drew 11 walks and struck out 28 times in 92 at-bats.

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.

Related Articles

Article Drop

Latest Articles