Pirates Prospects has learned that the Pittsburgh Pirates have promoted four pitchers from the Dominican Summer League to the Gulf Coast League. They will leave the Dominican in the morning, arriving before the GCL Pirates open their season tomorrow.
Lefty Jose Marcano, and right-handed pitchers Lizardy Dicent, Luis Nova and Andres Arrieta have all been promoted. Marcano (picture above) has already been in the U.S. for the Fall Instructional League last year in pitched well in the DSL last year. Arrieta signed in July out of Colombia. Nova signed right before Christmas and Dicent signed in February. They are both from the Dominican. All four pitchers have either made three or four relief appearances this year in the DSL already and should be able to go multiple innings. If you missed it earlier, we posted a GCL season preview.
The mid-season promotions from the DSL to the U.S. are rare, but the ones at this point serve dual purposes. The GCL Pirates have run into issues with needing position players to finish out games on the mound early in the season because no one is available to pitch. Pitchers down there have set days to throw and early in the season, they work on limited pitch counts. Plus the GCL Pirates will be getting prep pitchers from the recent draft who won’t be ready for game action right when they get to Pirate City. This same reason has caused Morgantown to use second baseman Melvin Jimenez twice in three games already.
The second reason is that with all of the international players that the Pirates signed, they were running out of roster room. Moving these four pitchers clears up space for four players who were recently signed and need to be put on rosters. There’s also the matter of the Dominican Academy only holding so many players and more will be coming in right after they sign on July 2nd.
