As you probably saw yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates announced their three exhibition games for Spring Training 2.0, so we will have live baseball in just four more days. All three games will be televised and on the radio. We are also ten days away from Opening Day in St Louis.
Baseball is back and the Pirates are going to need to make some decisions soon about their team. They are allowed to carry 30 players at the start of the season, so we will be seeing some guys make the team who wouldn’t have been around on a normal Opening Day.
There aren’t really a lot of cuts to be made with only 38 active players at PNC Park, including Keone Kela and Ke’Bryan Hayes, who haven’t made appearances yet. The eight cut players will all likely head to Altoona to join the practice squad of 19 players, who are going through early Spring Training type practices at this point. Once they have more players in Altoona, they will be able to play intrasquad games like they have been doing daily at PNC Park.
Speaking of intrasquad games, here are a couple of highlights from yesterday. The Pirates posted a video about Josh Bell hitting a home run, though all they showed was him rounding the bases, so I didn’t include that below. They have been awful with their 2.0 highlights, so this is the best you will get, featuring Gregory Polanco and Guillermo Heredia.
Stay hot, @El_Coffee.
and
Guillermo…so casual. pic.twitter.com/MfnTKBzpvm
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 14, 2020
As with the last four days, if the Pirates post a live video feed of their intrasquad game (not even sure there will be one) then I’ll post a quick article to give everyone a chance to see it. For those who show up late, the link to the video remains up on Facebook, so you don’t need to see it live to watch the action.
Also a slight update. The Pirates officially signed Parker Brahms as a non-drafted free agent last night. Back on June 16th, he was the first NDFA player they agreed to a deal with after this year’s draft, but he didn’t get his physical until yesterday. It appears all went well because he’s official now. Here is the original announcement. The Pirates have also signed catcher Joe Jimenez as an NDFA.
**We will have at least four articles today, including the one you’re currently reading. If any news comes up or the live video feed, we will have more. The other scheduled articles for today are as follows:
This Date in Pittsburgh Pirates History – Some very good pitchers born on this date, including one old player with a very high winning percentage.
Game Rewind – Although it wasn’t planned this way since I wrote it up 12 days ago, today’s Game Rewind is perfect for what’s going on with the Pirates right now. Separate from that, it has a nice family theme
1979 Season Recap – Pirates get some good pitching and some help from the opposing (lack of) defense.
Hope everyone has a swell Tuesday!
SONG OF THE DAY
DAILY QUIZ
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