The Pittsburgh Pirates gave some medical updates to the local media via Todd Tomczyk, who is the director of sports medicine.
Andrew McCutchen is dealing with minor elbow soreness and won’t be playing for a few days. We still have exactly two weeks until Opening Day, so if there’s no setbacks here, he should be ready to go with no issue.
Jarlin Garcia has a nerve injury in his left upper arm, and won’t be throwing for the next 4-5 weeks, before being reevaluated. So his possible return is still up in the air.
Dariel Lopez dislocated his knee, which is going to cost him the entire season. He’s a top 20 prospect in the system for most sources, who hit .286/.329/.476 with Greensboro in 2022. The hitter-friendly Greensboro park led to a huge home/road split, with a .915 OPS in 51 home games, and a .692 OPS in 51 road games.
Robert Stephenson threw a live BP. He will likely do another one of those before getting into a game.
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.
I’m also rooting for maggi. I have followed him from his ASU days. He broke several of barry bonds records… he dominated in altoona so zero reason in 2015 he wasn’t given the opportunity. And the with the twins 16hr in 2021. Last year he played with a broken hand for most of the year. Tough kid
Unrelated to this article, but looks like Ian anderson got sent to AAA braves camp and their LF spot is sorely lacking, wonder if any of our logjam young OFs could be in for a change of scenery swap for him?
its not like anderson is out of options or anything. im sure a fair deal could be worked out, but i’m betting that “extra starters in AAA” isn’t something the Braves are averse to. Who knows tho.
Im wondering if they seem to have soured on him some and have a potential black hole in left field, so maybe theres a match there
Haven’t seen any follow up on this, but Samaniego left the game with an apparent injury. He’s a guy I thought could put himself in the picture with a good showing at Indy, and the Pirates seemed interested in getting at least a bit of a look at him this spring.
I know preseason not supposed to mean a lot but we have no great performers, we plan on sending our best young players back to the minors and for what? It’s time to play what will win games not continually “give ‘em more time”. It’s time to break the mold and decide to change the course of defeat with at least a glimmer of hope. I’ll buy tickets to watch all these number 1 picks play baseball together. Old school development is not working let’s change our destiny and be different.
The younger guys need experienced talent round them in the bigs.
Believe me, beleive the players themselves — Cruz, Castro and Contreras are benefiting greatly by having lockers close to Santana. Rich Hill and Austin Hedges are helping the pitching staff.
We will see the benefits through improved play this year.
So is Maggi and Swaggerty going north? Hedges, Plawecki, Santana, Choi, Castro, Maggi, Cruz, Hayes, Reynolds, Suwinski, Cutch, Joe and Swaggerty? I’m not sure I would hate Maggi going north instead of bae, Mathias or owings. He’s batting 500 gotta give the guy his shot right?
i think we are moving toward a place where neither Castro nor Bae make the team, and Mathias is the 2b, and maggi or owings make the team.
Agree.. the difference is maggi shows up everyday to the park ready. The issue i see with the pirates …soft players.. making the team.
You might be right. I just think like Suwinski they are giving an Castro a look to start no matter what.
I support this
I was thinking the same thing about Maggi. None of the kids have pushed for a MLB slot and Owings be Owings. I start Swaggerty from day one. He has Pedegree and performance.
The Pirates tied it.
I’m actually starting to root for Maggi to make the team. You gotta reward performance at some point.
Like we did Juan Nicasio? ST stats mean nothing.
You like soft players huh?
Huhn? What does not going by ST stats have to do with liking/not liking soft players? Or do you WANT us to go by ST stats?
Oh hell, just keep all the Altoona guys and forget the rest of these slugs.
Now THAT’s throwing a Curve into the convo!
And Yohan Ramirez is still on the roster.
Pitching version of JVM?
Out of those 3 ML players we need Stephenson the most. Sorry Cutch, and I know Jarlin was supposed to be the 2nd LHP out of the bullpen. He hasn’t reassured my faith in the signing.
I would rather see them go with Alldred or Perdomo. Or maybe Zamora. I saw some interesting metrics on Zamora recently. He might be the play.
And it really sucks about Dariel. 21 year old season in AA would’ve been a nice jump in competition and a good test. Pirates fans are used to saying “there is always next year” though.
Two innings – Clarke 16 pitches, Oviedo 53. Are these teams playing the same sport?
It sure makes you wonder. I suppose there are other teams whose pitchers can’t or won’t throw strikes and whose hitters strike out in double figures nearly every game, but I can’t identify one!
Seriously sucks about Lopez. That may be a partial explanation why Javier Rivas has been with the older players at Pirate City, including today’s exhibition game.
Jared Jones, btw, has been impressive in camp, including today. Throwing 96-99 with better command of his breaking stuff.
Chandler was pitching in one of the upper level games, although I had to leave right then. It looked like Solometo was going in later.
If I understand the rules correctly, the max time a 60-day IL assignment can be backdated is 10 days, and Garcia last pitched 12 days ago. Now with at least 28 more days until he picks up a ball, and you have to figure a couple weeks to get into game shape, the Pirates seem to have missed the opportunity to put Garcia on the 60IL. If so, it’s another unforced error in roster management. Someone will have to be DFAd when the backup C and possibly Owings are added to the roster, and there’s only one Vilade to DFA.
I hope I have some of those details wrong.
For the 60-day IL, the 60 days start at the beginning of the regular season, so they have good reason not to put him on the 60-day IL right now.
Just learned that. You can put him on as soon as spring training starts, but the clock doesn’t start ticking until opening day.
The Lopez news is distressing but it sorely lacks information. When and where did this occur? Dis he do it home or in minor league spring training? Now when the rule five draft comes this year I guess they lose him.
According to Mackey, he did it “jumping” as part of a “team-issued offseason workout plan.”
I guess he never done that before. Still very sad news. He was one of my favorite players to follow.
He had TJ right after the Pirates first signed him, so he seems to run into some bad luck.
Sounds eerily like what happened to Diaz last night. All he was doing was jumping up and down a whole 2-3 inches
god help them if it was on a beach…