43.5 F
Pittsburgh

Minor Moves: Pitchers on the Move for Five Teams; Castro Returns to Action

Published:

The Pittsburgh Pirates had a plethora of pitching moves in the lower minors today. Here’s a summary of everything that went down (up actually) today.

Starting from the top, John Pomeroy has joined the West Virginia Power. They were short two players after Matt Seelinger was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays and Domingo Robles was promoted to Bradenton. Pomeroy had Tommy John surgery last April and has been at Morgantown this season, where he has a 4.70 ERA in 15.1 innings over 15 appearances. He has some good stats, such as 17 strikeouts, a 1.90 GO/AO ratio and a .237 BAA, but his 16 walks in just 15.1 innings are obviously too many.

Rodolfo Castro is the only position player in this update. He returns to West Virginia, coming back from a sore back that has had him out since July 28th. The 19-year-old second baseman was hitting .233/.282/.387 in 85 games before going on the disabled list.

Morgantown received a pair of pitchers, getting Alec Rennard and Argenis Romano. Rennard was signed as a non-drafted free agent in late June and he had a 2.31 ERA in 11.2 innings over nine appearances with Bristol. He has a 2.00 GO/AO ratio and nine strikeouts, though the control (seven walks) could use some work. Romano has been used in long relief, throwing 32.2 innings over ten appearances. He has a 3.03 ERA, 30 strikeouts, a 1.13 WHIP and a .219 BAA this season. While those are strong numbers, he’s coming off of an outing in which he gave up seven runs over three innings, so they looked much better a few days ago.

Luis Nova are Denny Roman are headed to Bristol to help their bullpen. Nova might be the first player to start in the DSL and played in the GCL and Bristol all in the same season. He was an international free agent signed back in December shortly after the new Latin American scouting director Junior Vizcaino took over. Nova is a 20-year-old, 6’1″ right-handed pitcher, who can get his fastball up to 94 MPH.

Denny Roman was an even more recent international signing, coming to the Pirates from his team in Mexico in April. He’s a 19-year-old, 5’9″ lefty who can also hit 94 MPH. He was only in the DSL due to visa issues with coming to the U.S. When those cleared up, he skips right over the GCL to Bristol. Roman had 44 strikeouts in 23.2 innings in the DSL, though he has pitched at a level of play that is higher than Bristol while in Mexico, so the DSL wasn’t much of a challenge.

The GCL Pirates are getting pitcher Yerry De Los Santos, who has missed time to arm/shoulder injuries over the year. He was a starter in the DSL in 2015 after getting a six-figure bonus to sign. Since those 59 innings he pitched that rookie year, De Los Santos has been limited to 18 innings over the last three seasons.

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