It’s a new week of minor league action. Our Top Performers article looked at the best of last week, led by Henry Davis and JP Massey. You should expect some minor league roster moves on Tuesday as usual. So far there’s one for Greensboro, but we will update this post if/when others are announced.
Braxton Ashcraft has rejoined the Greensboro roster from the Temporary Inactive List, after not playing last week. He’s returning from Tommy John surgery this year, so you should expect some innings monitoring throughout this season.
The 23-year-old Ashcraft has made five starts this year split between Bradenton and Greensboro. He has a 2.60 ERA over 17.1 innings, with 20 strikeouts and an 0.92 WHIP.
UPDATES:
Catcher Carter Bins has joined Bradenton on a rehab assignment. The 24-year-old has not yet debuted this season. He spent most of last year with Indianapolis, where he had a .208 batting average in 71 games, though it came with a respectable .705 OPS.
Pitcher Tyler Chatwood has also joined Bradenton. The 33-year-old veteran of ten big league seasons was a minor league signing this year by the Pirates, who has been injured since Spring Training.
Owen Sharts has joined Bradenton from Extended Spring Training. The 2021 13th round pick struggled horribly with control last year for the FCL Pirates, walking 27 batters in 11 innings. He also hit two batters and he threw ten wild pitches.
Chase De Jong has been activated from the Temporary Inactive List and he joins Indianapolis. He was designated for assignment by the Pirates a week ago, but he cleared waivers and had the option to remain with the team or become a free agent. He will be joined by another big league pitcher, Rob Zastryzny, who has been on the Injured List for the last three month.
John O’Reilly has been moved to the Development List for Indianapolis to make room. He has a 7.90 ERA over 14 appearances, with 14 strikeouts in 13.2 innings.
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.
Bins is out. Pitch got away and, after the play, he immediately walked off cursing. Hammy maybe.
Bad outing for Cederlind
Was that his first?
Second. First was bad.
Bummer…. Hope he gets it settled down for his sake.
Greensboro has had a couple days off and hasn’t needed a 5th SP in the last week or so. So Ashcraft moving to the Developmental List wasn’t surprising.
But he should be their 5th SP going forward: Solometo, Chandler, Chen, Linarez, Ashcraft(with Deese as their multi inning/long RP).
Hope Bins can progress with the bat, could be quality depth or a trade chip. I wonder how long until Gutierrez comes off the injured list?
LOL!! A true sign that you are in the minors when there is chain link right behind 1B and a dented up pickup parked right on the other side of that fence….
That’s actually from when he was in Spring Training during the 2021 season. That truck is in the “tunnel” you walk through to get to the middle of the four fields at Pirate City
Someday I hope to go down for ST and spend some time watching the players there. Retirement is not so far off 🙂
Good stuff so far from Braxton. One to watch the rest of this season.
He has been on my “to watch” list since before he got TJ’d. Glad to see him pitching again.