The Pittsburgh Pirates set the Indianapolis roster yesterday with what seemed like a large group of transactions. The list grew much bigger today, as they added numerous players to the 60-day Injured List and the Full-Season Injured List. Here’s a list with the moves.
Pitchers Scott Randall, Daniel Rivero and Wei-Chieh Huang are all done for the season after getting placed on the Full-Season Injured List. We also knew about Dariel Lopez missing the season, but he was officially placed on the injured list yesterday. Randall was acquired in a trade for Diego Castillo this off-season.
Even more players hit the 60-day IL, though we knew about a few of them already. Pitchers Hunter Barco and Drake Fellows, along with outfielder Lonnie White Jr are all recovering from surgery, so they weren’t going to be available before June. White recently had his surgery on his left thumb, which had a 7-9 week recovery. Fellows and Barco had Tommy John surgery last year.
The Pirates also added pitchers Jose Maldonado, Brennan Malone, first baseman Josh Sightler and outfielders Jack Herman and Solomon Maguire to the 60-day IL.
Altoona reliever Jeffrey Passantino was released. The 27-year-old had a 4.47 ERA last year in 48.1 innings, with a 1.37 WHIP, 42 strikeouts and a .281 BAA.
If any other minor league moves are made today, we will update them here.
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.
Hot smash by O’Neill! Wonder what his exit velocity was? 😁
some real disappointments there. what’s up with fellows? has he pitched at all for the pirates?
He has 5 appearances for the Bucs for 11 IP between rookie league and low A. His career so far.
ooooooof
oooooof!
The last part of the Joe Musgrove trade. We have seen David Bednar, Endy Rodriguez, LHSP/RP Omar Cruz, 24, who was at AA in 2022, and Hudson Head, 22, who played CF at A+ in 2022. But, Drake Fellows is someone I cannot recall. He was a Senior Pitcher out of Vandy, but I am not sure he pitched for SD either.
some players will just be forever hurt, unfortunately
Ok, so who’s pitching, starting pitching in Altoona now….
Nicholas, Jones, Meis, Shortridge, and Sullivan all should be
Mostly guys who are getting forced out of AAA by the numbers game, I’d guess.
It seems that if you didn’t “master” AA you got held back, I’m sure is as you said a numbers game, but I’m glad to see Peguero, Davis, Frazier, Scott, Nicholas, Gorski, and a few other get held back!
Whether holding Peguero is good or not it’s tough watching Owings butchering the ss position at Indy the last two days!
I hear ya!
Will Brennan Malone ever not be on the DL?
Rough situation for him, highly touted in his draft…Be nice if he recovers and salvages a career. His pitching arm/shoulder has been jacked up since he came over in the trade.
I wonder if he’s still rehabbing from the shoulder injury or did something else pop up
I digress—but the Nationals are becoming Pirates East—Kuhl, Trevor Williams, Anthony Banda, Michael Chavis and now Kevin Pawlecki
Great way to get in that #1 pick lottery
Those are guys who know to lose!
I guess they gave up on winning!
They have not really been a winning team since 2018, but they have kind of been like the Huntington teams. Bad, but not too bad, so they do not get the really good picks. If you are going to lose, might as well lose bad, so you get a good draft pick.
They’re probably being hurt by the ownership situation. The Lerners want out. They envisioned a huge real estate empire centered around the ballpark and it never took off.
Rizzo hasn’t aged terribly well, either. Dombrowski finally seems to have adapted to the modern game. Rizzo hasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s a safe bet the Nats will be a pretty bad baseball team this year but I feel like Rizzo did pretty well with the trades to unload Soto, Turner and Scherzer. Not a robbery of talent but fair deals. Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz, CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore and the rest provide a fairly solid base level of talent with upside all on rookie contracts, except Ruiz who signed a modestly priced extension already, makes it fairly easy see a winning team in the future there. Highly doubt any of those guys become the star caliber players they were traded for but having a sizeable collection of above average regulars on cheap deals allows Rizzo to go out and buy the stars. Granted the pending sale does complicate everything and the seemingly decades long TV rights dispute with Baltimore certainly complicates the potential sale.
And, Rizzo has already signed Keibert Ruiz for 8/$50 mil. That’s an excellent signing for a team that needs to rebuild quickly. Hopefully our GM has taken note!
Yeah, the TV rights situation has been an albatross for them since day one.