The Pittsburgh Pirates have made some transactions in the minors to fill the loss of Jason Rogers, who signed to play in Japan on Thursday night. Jordan Luplow has been promoted to Indianapolis and Logan Hill will be going to the Altoona Curve. They are tied for the system lead with 16 homers each.
Luplow hit .287/.368/.535 in 73 games with 15 doubles and 16 homers. He ranks ninth in the Eastern League with his .903 OPS and was just named to the Eastern League All-Star game. Luplow has been solid in the outfield this season, showing decent range and a strong arm. He has six outfield assists and no errors. He is putting up his best offensive stats and has maintained a low strikeout rate for a slugger at 15.6%.
Hill hit .266/.351/.513 in 71 games with Bradenton, His 16 homers have him atop the Florida State League leaders, and his .864 OPS is the seventh best in the league. Hill has done a better job at the plate this season cutting down on his poor BB/SO ratio. He has 31 walks already, after 34 all of last year. Part of that could be the respect he is getting from pitchers for his power output this season. He has also cut down a little on the strikeouts, going from a 26.4% strikeout rate last year, to 23.9% this season. He needs the bat to carry him because he is a below average runner with limited range out in left field, so all of his value comes from his power.
Neither announcement has been made official yet by the teams, but expect other moves when they are announced as Altoona will need to open up two roster spots. Hill may not be available tonight, but Brandon Cumpton was promoted to Altoona yesterday. He had a 2.53 ERA in 10.2 innings over six appearances in Bradenton. We will update this post when other moves are announced.
In a move possibly related to these moves, reliever Julio Eusebio has been promoted from Morgantown to West Virginia. That puts the Power one player over the limit and they have been using 13 pitchers and 12 fielders for most of this season. So you could probably expect a position player to go to Bradenton, since they are now at 13 each spot.
The moves are all official now, including Alexis Bastardo being promoted to Bradenton to fill in for Hill. Bastardo at one time looked like a solid prospect with five-tool potential, but a 2014 shoulder injury really limited his effectiveness and he never bounced back from that. He has had a solid season for West Virginia, showing the ability to play all three outfield spots, but he isn’t considered a prospect at this point, being too far removed from the toolsy player he was coming up through the low levels of the system.
UPDATE 5:25 PM: Connor Joe has been placed on the 7-day disabled list due to a middle finger dislocation on his left hand. It happened three nights ago when he tried to slide headfirst into second base and his hand got caught up in the dirt. There is no timetable yet for his return. He is hitting .251/.352/.384 in 65 games.
The Luplow promotion and this move, open up two spots for Hill and Cumpton today, so the roster is full. Interestingly, the Curve with go with 14 pitchers and 11 position players for now.
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.
My boy gets a well deserved promotion. Great for you Logan “Country Strong” fricking Hill.
Grrr, was looking forward to watching Luplow in the Eastern League All-Star Game on the 12th. Good for him.
Hey, this is nice news. I got bored refreshing hockey rumors every 10 minutes at work and checked P2 and saw this. I’m excited to see what Luplow can do at AAA. He looks like he could be a legit middle of the order threat.
Luplow one step closer
John, Who do you think gets the bump up from Charleston to Bradenton?
Really don’t know. Hunter Owen seems like the best to move up, but that only makes sense if they throw him in the outfield. I’ve seen him play outfield multiple times and he is much better out there than third base. He’s a field ornament at third base. If it’s not Owen making the move to the outfield, then it could just be some filler like Carlos Munoz or Alexis Bastardo. There aren’t any exciting options.
I totally agree on the “There aren’t any exciting options”
Bastardo gives them a bench guy who can even take the mound in a blowout like he did a few weeks ago.
about time. excited to see what luplow does in aaa
Well deserved. Do you think they’re be a similar Espinal/Craig type promotion soon?
I thought that would happen first. The way Espinal looks this season, he should be in Indy already. He’s a free agent at the end of the year and it would be nice to have a large sample size of him in Triple-A, so you can make a more informed decision on what do to with him this off-season
So he’s in the same situation as Kingham next year or Hansen this year?
Not at all. Those players ran out of options. He hasn’t even started using options because he’s never been on the 40-man. Same situation as Neverauskas and Osuna last year, Ngoepe the year before. Even Jared Lakind, if the plan is to bring him back as a minor league signing.
Oh so they just need to add him to the 40 man roster or lose him?
Or re-sign him as a minor league free agent, which he might not want to do if they don’t give him a shot at Indianapolis
And, maybe we can limit the practice of using MI’s in the OF in AAA to increase their positional diversity. Luplow has truly earned this promotion.
Luplow’s 40 grade for his name-tool will probably make him a AAAA player for life. There’s always a chance the light will go on and he’ll change his name to Stone Killingblow and have a significant impact in Pgh.
J-Plow sounds good though. Maybe we could just call him that. Or Mr. Plow.
Al Luplow played for 7 years. I think it is a great name (unless he develops a ‘loop’ in his swing and can’t hit the ‘low’ and outside pitch).