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Altoona Report: A Few Prospects Among the Organizational Players

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This is a report from the last three games of Altoona’s four-game series against Bowie this past weekend.  The Curve won, 7-0, on Friday before losing the Saturday and Sunday games, 3-2 and 5-4.

We knew from the start of the season that the Curve wouldn’t exactly be overloaded with prospects.  To some extent, it’s normal for a system to have more and more veterans and organizational players at the upper levels due to the inevitable attrition in the minors.  In Altoona’s case, there’s been something of a “hole” moving up year by year in the Pirates’ system, largely by chance; the better prospects just belonged at the next higher or lower levels.  That hole got to Altoona this year and a few promotions, most notably Oneil Cruz, didn’t change things substantially.  Injuries among players who should have been with the Curve didn’t help, either:  Gage Hinsz has missed the whole season and Stephen Alemais nearly all of it, and Robbie Glendinning, a recent promotion, is currently out.

I can’t say I paid a whole lot of attention to the players I don’t believe have a realistic chance to reach Pittsburgh.  Here are a few that maybe do.

Pitchers

Sean Brady, LHP:  Well, OK, Brady will almost certainly depart as a minor league free agent after this season, but he threw a complete game shutout on Friday, so I’ll say a few things here.  The Friday game was (very mildly) interesting because it featured a rematch of two soft-tossing lefties that I’d seen the previous Sunday in Altoona, the Bowie pitcher being Alex Wells.  Both have fastballs that sit around 87-88.  Brady has a good curve and a solid change, and throws with a high-effort delivery.  Wells doesn’t have a pitch as good as Brady’s curve, but his command is better.  Brady’s fastball command was, in fact, awful in the Sunday game, missing all over the place and leaving him battling from behind in the count on most hitters.  He managed to recover repeatedly with the softer stuff for three innings before the hitters started sitting on the curve.  Wells had a much better game.  Last Friday, though, Wells’ act finally seemed to wear thin the second time through the lineup and Altoona put up a six-run fifth inning.  For a pitcher with that kind of repertoire, facing the same team in two straight games probably isn’t ideal.

Brady, on the other hand, had much better command on Friday and managed to avoid hitter’s counts most of the game, throwing 77 of 110 pitches for strikes.  It was probably the best game of a lengthy career, so it doesn’t really change the outlook going forward.  With his stuff, if his command becomes much more consistent (he’s had some pretty sharp ups and downs with the Curve, although he’s reliably given them 5-7 innings), I could maybe see him reaching the majors as a middle reliever.

Cam Vieaux, LHP:  Another soft-tossing lefty, Vieaux actually made it to Indianapolis earlier this year, where he had significant problems with walks and gopher balls.  The Pirates moved him back down a couple weeks ago, mainly due to a rotation logjam.  In this game, he took a no-hitter into the sixth, although he clearly wasn’t going to finish it due to a high pitch count.  He struggled with the strike zone throughout, with lots and lots of 2-0, 3-1 and 3-0 counts, but the Bowie hitters repeatedly bailed him out by chasing pitcher’s pitches in hitter’s counts.  That stopped with two outs in the sixth and Vieaux issued two walks.  He got ahead 0-2 on the next hitter but served up a longball that just got over the fence.  It was the only hit in his six innings and the only runs in the 3-2 loss.

Vieaux in this game threw a fastball, slider and change, mixing his pitches a lot and moving the ball around.  The fastball sat at 88-91, although interestingly Vieaux cranked it up to 91-93 when he was struggling in the sixth inning.  It obviously didn’t help, in fact it may have hampered his control.  None of Vieaux’s pitches drew many swings and misses.  I’m very skeptical about his approach working at higher levels, at least not on any consistent basis.  We’ve seen a lot of lefties who try to stay out of the strike zone but close enough that hitters will go after pitches they can’t hit well, with Jeff Locke and Steve Brault being obvious examples.  It never seems to work long-term and it wasn’t working in AAA for Vieaux:  He had a 4.2 BB/9 and 2.2 HR/9 there.

Nick Mears, RHP:  The Pirates signed Mears as a non-drafted free agent near the end of last season.  He apparently was hurt a lot of the time he was in college and got noticed in summer ball.  He’s moved up very quickly and this was his second outing in AA.  His fastball sat at 96-97 and he threw a sharp, low-80s curve.  So far he’s produced a lot of strikeouts (13.3 K/9 for his brief career).  In this game, other than the very first time he threw it, I don’t think he threw a single curve for a strike over two innings, although the pitch wasn’t generally far out of the zone.  Mears gave up just a hit and a walk, but left-handed hitters made hard contact.  He has an extreme platoon split in a very small sample size:  right-handed opponents have an OPS of .382 against him, left-handed .863.  His stuff is impressive and could get him to the majors in the near future, but he may need to add a cutter or something to use against lefties.

Beau Sulser, RHP:  I’d been curious about Sulser because he’s a guy who appeared to be an organizational player, but who’s been getting very good results in a swing role with the Curve.  He skipped Bradenton to open this year in AA and has a 2.60 ERA.  Sulser had spectacular walk and K rates in low A, but his walk rate is merely good in AA and his K/9 has dropped from 9.9 to 5.7.  That’s often an indication of a pitcher who keeps the ball just off the plate and relies on hitters to chase it, which lower level hitters do and upper level ones don’t, or at least they didn’t on Sunday.  In that game his fastball was mostly about 88, but he occasionally cranked it up to 90-91.  He also threw a change and slider, both in the low- to mid-80s, which isn’t a very large velocity differential.  The change is probably Sulser’s best pitch, as it appeared to have some fade and looked the same as the fastball coming out of his hand.  None of his pitches generated many swings and misses.  He fell behind a lot and needed 73 pitches, 42 of them strikes, to get through three innings.  He gave up four hits and four walks, and struck out nobody.  He did hold the damage to two runs by not giving in when he fell behind and keeping the ball away from the middle of the plate.

Jesus Liranzo, RHP:  Liranzo was removed from the 40-man roster in June and demoted from AAA.  In this game, his first pitch was 99 mph and got driven to the fence, where it was caught.  After that he sat at 96-97.  In his first inning, the Bowie hitters sat on the fastball and he couldn’t get his slider over, although he wasn’t as wild as he was in the webcasts I watched when he was in AAA.  The hitters kept ripping the fastball and he gave up two runs.  He started getting the slider over in his second inning — in fact, that’s mostly what he threw — and he had an easy inning.

Joel Cesar, RHP:  Cesar had a quick inning, throwing only 14 pitches, so I didn’t see a whole lot.  Like Liranzo, he sits at 96-97 and throws a slider.  His control isn’t great and he throws with a lot of effort, which isn’t surprising for a pitcher who’s 5’11”.  The slider didn’t look like a dominant pitch to me and he’s gotten only decent results with Altoona.

Hitters

The Altoona lineup is largely comprised of players who appear to be organizational guys now.  I’m going to stick to the players I can see maybe reaching Pittsburgh.

Chris Sharpe, OF:  Sharpe got promoted from Bradenton two months ago.  Since then, he’s shown decent power, but he’s had trouble making contact.  Right-handed pitchers are eating him alive, holding him to an OPS of .579 through Sunday.  Against lefties his OPS is 1.000.  Sure enough, he had three hits, including a double and homer, against the soft-tossing lefty on Friday and struggled against hard-throwing righties on Saturday, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.  He didn’t play Sunday.  He may need to tone his swing down and look to pull the ball less.

Jared Oliva, OF:  Oliva didn’t have a particularly good or bad series, going 1-for-4 in every game.  He got fooled a couple times by offspeed stuff and also swung through some high fastballs, but only struck out twice so it’s not like he was struggling.  He had one steal, on which he got a big jump.  He also got good jumps in center and made one diving, laid-out catch on a shallow liner.

Oneil Cruz, SS:  Cruz looked very tentative at the plate, which isn’t too surprising considering that he’s had a month in AA after just 35 games in high A (he was out quite a while with a broken bone in his foot).  He mostly seemed to be trying to make contact, which he generally did, and didn’t get good swings at many pitches.  He also fell behind consistently by taking pitches early in the count.  He had a home run and double in the Saturday game, both to the opposite field, which sometimes seems to be what works best for him.  He probably just needs more time against the quality of pitching he’s seeing now.  In the field, he threw away one routine grounder but otherwise looked fine.  He made one nice play in the hole on which it definitely helped to have an 80 arm.  Of course, a lot of the time you just wonder whether he can get those long limbs unwound quickly enough to make plays at short, but the Pirates are apparently determined to continue this experiment.  Oh, and with that stride Cruz can really move on the bases once he’s underway.

Jason Delay, C:  Delay caught the first two games.  He had a very big month at the plate in May but has hit very little since then, except for some power recently.  He has a 244/289/416 line this year after hitting for almost no power previously.  His walk rate has dropped from previous years and his K rate is up, and judging by the two games he’s trying to pull the ball more.  He receives very well and has a history of throwing pretty well, although the one throw he made in the two games sailed high.  The Pirates have three upper level catching “prospects” and the other two — Arden Pabst at Altoona and Christian Kelley at Indianapolis — have been basket cases offensively.  Delay may have the best chance of ending up as a “third catcher,” but it’s hard to see more than that.

Wilbur Miller
Wilbur Miller
Having followed the Pirates fanatically since 1965, Wilbur Miller is one of the fast-dwindling number of fans who’ve actually seen good Pirate teams. He’s even seen Hall-of-Fame Pirates who didn’t get traded mid-career, if you can imagine such a thing. His first in-person game was a 5-4, 11-inning win at Forbes Field over Milwaukee (no, not that one). He’s been writing about the Pirates at various locations online for over 20 years. It has its frustrations, but it’s certainly more cathartic than writing legal stuff. Wilbur is retired and now lives in Bradenton with his wife and three temperamental cats.

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