The Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t announced their Opening Day roster yet. As of right now, there are still 29 players active on their Spring Training roster. Three of those players are hurt, but the remaining 26 aren’t necessarily the guys who will be available tomorrow afternoon when they take on the Cincinnati Reds. The deadline to set rosters is noon on Thursday.
Here’s a look at the 29-man roster, followed by some notes.
Starting Pitchers
Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras, Rich Hill, Vince Velasquez, Johan Oviedo, JT Brubaker
Bullpen
David Bednar, Wil Crowe, Jose Hernandez, Chase De Jong, Duane Underwood Jr, Jarlin Garcia, Robert Stephenson, Rob Zastryzny, Colin Holderman, Dauri Moreta
Catchers
Austin Hedges, Jason Delay
Infielders
Carlos Santana, Ji-Man Choi, Ji-hwan Bae, Rodolfo Castro, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz
Outfielders
Canaan Smith-Njigba, Bryan Reynolds, Andrew McCutchen, Connor Joe, Jack Suwinski
What We Know
Brubaker, Garcia and Stephenson are all injured. They will start the season on the injured list. That would seem to leave a 26-man roster, but…
What We Don’t Know
Jason Mackey had this note about the bullpen battle for the last spot.
Funky situation for Rob Zastryzny. He said he's "traveling with the team and waiting for word." I asked if there was any sort of internal deadline for letting him know he had made it.
"I’m hoping by first pitch I know."
— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) March 29, 2023
Zastryzny is in limbo now, while the Pirates wait to see if someone better becomes available. Either way, it would mean that two 40-man roster spots have to be opened up. One will be for Jason Delay. The other will be for Zastryzny, or a mystery player.
Jarlin Garcia is out for some time, so he will be one of those players going to the 60-man roster to open a roster spot. There hasn’t been any update on JT Brubaker yet, other than he will be on the injured list.
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.
Please fix your search function on the site. It doesn’t work.
When will we know the minor league rosters? In particular, I’m curious about Nick Gonzales and Peguero. Both starting in Indy, does one of the go to Altoona? Or has all of this already been said and I’m just late to the game?
came here to ask this exact question. I think there will be a lot of interesting (questionable?) assignments throughout the org as we add more talent to the logjam. At the very least, we should be able to get a read on how BC and the front office feel about some of these guys
It’s just so weird to me to be so anal about not giving a Blake sabol a 40 man spot, but here we are and they’re likely gonna have to dfa someone for Zastryzny. Like. Itd be smarter to just call up Yohan or Selby right?
I hear you. He seemed to have some talent. Dumb move.
It certainly looks like a 40-man spot would have been much better used on Sabol. It will be interesting to see how much the Giants play him and how he does. Will he be closer to Chris Shelton or Jose Bautista, to bring up a couple of past Rule 5 mistakes?
It does sound like Sabol is going to start today in LF, and will likely play a lot, at least until Haniger and Slater return. After that, it probably depends on whether he is hitting or not, what they do with him. Something else interesting, is the backup catcher for the Giants, at least until Haniger and Slater return, is Roberto Perez.
I was surprised that even after signing Hedges we didn’t sign Perez, especially when it turned out he had to settle for a minor league deal.
Happy Opening Day 2023! I am ready for the full season ride with yinz both highs and lows and in betweens!
Mackey seems to think there’s a decent chance of something getting done with Reynolds by tomorrow. That’s a typical negotiation pattern — nothing happens for ages, then suddenly there’s a deadline of some sort and everyone gets real. If they both honestly want it done, it’ll happen.
Feels like the hayes deal from last year, not much smoke and then big bomb dropped on opening day
Interesting.
Marketing people are looking for those old boxes of Z shirts they thought they would never get rid of.
why did we ever get rid of Manny Bañuelos ?
Maybe ask the 29 other teams that haven’t bothered to sign him.
he wasn´t so bad and was the reason we won a few games last year
Maybe Manny is the Mystery Lefty poise to rob the Zman of his Pirates dream.
The Pirates being the Pirates, they probably acquired a lefty a week ago but they’re waiting until a minute before the opener to tell the Zazzer.
I remember when it was about two days out from when some team won the Jung-ho Kang bid and I told my wife “I think the Pirates might of just signed Jung-ho Kang since no one has said they did, and only the Pirates would keep it a secret for no apparent reason”
Honestly any LHP they’d pick up off the DFA list is going to be in the same range of quality as Zastryzny. The guy answered the call when you needed a lefty to come in with no guarantee of a roster spot. Throw him a bone. You can (and probably will) always cut him later.
There’s always Pirates fans favorite whipping boy, Ryan Vlade, who can be DFA’d to make room for a legitimate bullpen arm.
Get the name right…..It’s Ryan Vilade Who’s Still On The Roster….
Let me go ahead and apologize for this and every other spelling error I make this season now, so you won’t feel the need to call me out again in the future.
Happy baseball season.
I was thinking the joke was that the five words after his name are now officially part of his name because they’ve been said right after his name so many times now . . . could be wrong though
Well Pache went to the Phillies. Hiura went down to the minors in Milwaukee. We ain’t getting them. Who else is out there being cut?
Ohtani?????
Sure, if you pay his salary!
Bake sales 🙂
I thought you are accountant, make it work.
I’m in the kitchen as we speak. Will take some serious cooking of the books 🙂
I’ll hack Nutting’s account and send you a link😆
350 degrees for 45 minutes, I think!
Thats a lotta perogies.
He prefers Trout.
Got a truckload of Taters coming tomorrow 🙂
Some people prefer sauerkraut stuffing. I have always been more of a potato filling fan but been known to eat some kraut fill rogies.
Kraut will be on the menu too. Takes a while to peel that many taters. Kraut can be bought premade 😁
premade kraut… what are ya a communiss?
Takes too long to make it from raw cabbage. I will rephrase. I would make it from a quality commercial brand but with my my usual doctoring to put my touch on it 🙂
Wouldn’t Triolo also be headed to the 60 day disabled list? Seems like a hamate surgery would lead to significant DL time.
No, he was sent to the minors. If they add him to the 60, it starts his service time clock. If you place him on the minor league IL, it does nothing. That’s to say they could do this, but it makes no sense and usually doesn’t happen until it’s completely necessary.
Triolo is 25 and the Pirates don’t want to start his service time clock (?), and yet I have been told by more than one poster here that the reason Swaggerty was sent down was NOT because of service time, because he is, wait for it, ….. 25.
They’re pulling the same crap with Swag. Just saying.
This organization is provably stupid. There’s no way they have an actual analytics department, or someone would be pounding the table about promoting hitters in their physical primes.
It’s not the service time so much as the money. IL players get major league salary.
Thank you John.
The guy is all in the details…
Zastrizwizzle gotta be pacing the floors.
Z is like a bachelorette waiting for BC to give him the rose. Poor guy.
The hotel the Bucs are staying at will not be happy with the worn carpet from his non stop pacing……….