The Pittsburgh Pirates (22-19) are on the road for a two-game series against the Detroit Tigers (18-21), starting on Tuesday night at 6:40 PM for the first pitch.
The Pirates are sending out Luis Ortiz (0-1, 3.60) for his second start of the season. He will be taking on veteran right-hander Michael Lorenzen (1-2, 4.18), who is making his sixth start of the seasons.
Here are some news items since our last game discussion on Sunday
**Plenty of minor league moves today, some of them rehab assignments
**Pirates Prospects Daily: A Florida State League Showdown Headlines the Week for Pirates Affiliates
**On Saturday we noted that there is a clear group of five top prospects this year. Three of those players had big games last week. Plenty of video here to watch.
**Henry Davis impresses once again, while pitcher JP Massey has an outstanding start. Here’s the look at the top ten hitters and top ten pitchers for the Pirates last week.
**Mitch Keller gets some recognition from the National League for his great week.
**MLB Pipeline updated their top 100 prospects list on Monday. Three Pirates moved up, one moved down.
**On the history side, today’s Card of the Day article looks at a special card put out by Topps for Drew Maggi
**Today’s daily history has updated/extended bios for five players born on May 16th, including Rick Rhoden and Rick Reuschel
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📻 93.7 The Fan | The PRN#LetsGoBucs pic.twitter.com/3lpQ0sn5JH— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) May 16, 2023
Tigers
Quick series with Pittsburgh starts tonight. pic.twitter.com/z6osPsuU6R
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) May 16, 2023
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.
Doesn’t matter who the Pirates draft it won’t be enough. this is STILL a sad organization. Marcano, Suwinski , Bae & Castro are AAAA at best, Andjuar should be DFA’ed & McCutchen & Santana are pretty much at the end of their careers. Nothing in the way of exciting prospects on their way. They will probably draft another undersized week hitting middle infielder #1 instead of Crews.
And Hayes can’t hit and Reynolds has forgotten how to hit homeruns.
Maybe the wrong thread but Peguero seems to be hitting again? K rate down too.
Unfortunately is the right tread, I miss when they were separate.
3 doubles tonight
At least Marcano showed some emotion. Another big fat zero on the scoreboard. Where’s the veteran leadership now? What’s it like in the clubhouse these days? This team is sound asleep and simply going through the motions.
Wake me up when it’s Mitch’s turn on the bump.
Is Mitch hitting? Is kind of hard to win without scoring, so I’m told…
That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Ok for those of you clamoring for Crews, how many home runs does he need to hit each night to make up for mediocre starting pitching and putrid hitting by the other 8 guys in the lineup?
The first 2 games of the Washington series the pirates scored 22 runs , the last 14 games counting tonight they have scored 22 runs.
The Curse of the Maggi continues.
Since Maggi was cut, the A’s have double the win total as the Pirates.
A’s 4 Pirates 2
If this snowball doesn’t get stopped soon, another 100 loss season isn’t out of reach.
Reynolds….3 k’s….lost again. I have needed to adjust my expectations for him. I thought when we first got him we may have snagged a great hitter. Not so. He is good and can be part of a good team, but he gets in funks too easily. He really was not that good of a hitter last year. It is looking more and more like ‘21 is going to be an outlier.
There were a few, very few of us that didn’t want him extended, satisfied with him playing out his contract…..I’m hoping to be wrong.
Not going to say you’re wrong. I think he needs protection around him to get to his ceiling. Also does better with facial hair at least a stashe.
It’s hard to argue on this matter but I hope you’re wrong.
Still wondering why their best two pitchers are getting 6 days off?
They’re protecting them from injury. Agree with it or strongly disagree with it as I do, matters not. It’s just the way of the world now. This isn’t a Pirates thing. It’s an MLB thing.
Swinging at pitches on the edge of the strike zone with no strikes like Cutch and Reynolds did in 8th inning, and watching 3rd strikes go into the Catchers mitt as they did on numerous occasions earlier tonight is a formula for getting shutout.
Just waiting for June… call up everyone!
Can they at least score a run? Give me some hope.
Or, win a game even when Keller’s not on the mound! And yet they are still floating above .500 somehow…
Yeah floating like a dead body.
Can we please end the Josh Palacios experiment already. just terrible.
He had 90 ABs in majors the last two years and showed very very little. No power whatsoever. So this is not his first time seeing MLB pitching.
it doesn’t look like he can hit a breaking ball, even from a right hand pitcher. I would think the team would know this before they brought him up, I doubt he was hitting breaking balls in the minors, so why bring him up then?
I think they were trying to get the hot hand and hope it carried over. He was definitely the best at that moment but don’t forget that they had him platooning two weeks earlier in Altoona
I understand the “hot hand” thing but my goodness! It’s time to try somebody else.
I get that, but unless he is hitting breaking balls, he is just being set up to fail on a big stage. I have only seen 3 at bats, but he doesn’t look good at all against breaking balls. They have to be tracking that data, no?
Yes, they definitely know his weaknesses. People get paid to track it, plus they have years of scouting notes before he joined them
Fits right in with the rest of the lineup lately.
Okay I missed the beginning
Can someone tell me if Ortiz looked worse than old Keller or not?
Where’s his velo? Gameday is saying 93, 94mph. Not good
Thanks all for the replies.. I guess it’s about execution & command for Ortiz then. Sigh…
Mostly it’s lack of command.
His velo was good, 98, 96 when he departed. That was not his problem.
He did have some lower late but I just chalk it up to throwing so many pitches in a short time
He started off throwing nothing but sliders. Most of them not close, or middle middle. When he started throwing fastballs he appeared to be trying to overthrow it.
He hit 98 at least twice in the first. Lost velo, but he threw a ton of pitches for three innings of work
That’s one of the best slides you’ll ever see by Mckinstry.
Davis with #9
That young man needs to play in a tougher league. Say, maybe, the National League?
Did you mean Davis?
Yep, auto got me. Edited though
I figured. 3-run shot with 2 outs to give them the lead.
The media should be making BC feel very uncomfortable for continuing to trot out Hedges and Delay when Davis and Endy are hitting so much better.
i know you know this, but super-2 cutoff isn’t until early June, so no way it happens before then, at the earliest.
Hedges I totally agree, I would like Delay to get more consistent at bats. I think he can be a good backup up or a good trade chip if both Endy and Davis replace him.
Who knows, maybe second half this year Endy will be starting with Delay backing him up, while Davis is gunning down runners from right and dropping bombs in the bullpen at PNC.
Man I don’t see the hitting getting any better, any hitting in the minors?
Liover has 3 doubles and Termarr has a couple hits
Davis, Endy, Nick G., and CSM have homered today.
And why is the outside pitch always called on Hayes?
It’s a conspiracy!
Not quite sure why Ortiz is pitching tonight with the schedule the way it is.
Guessing so all the guys get the days off in the rotation. Built in rest
Ortiz:
doing it to himself……
I thought signing VV was a huge mistake. Now I am pining for his return.
Ortiz just hit the edge of the grass with a pitch. In all my years of watching baseball, I’ve never seen a pitch miss that short.
Might be time to shower when you walk Miguel Cabrera. Might be the least dangerous hitter in baseball right now and I know the catcher for the Pirates
He’s definitely channeling his inner Nuke Laloosh tonight.
Lorenzen used to be a 2-way player, hit for .711 OPS in the show. We could use him.
Call me stupid, but isn’t swinging the bat a prerequisite for getting a hit?
Home runs by Gonzales and Rodriguez in the 3rd. Indy up 3-0.
Can they make it to Detroit by the 7th inning?
Not a bad response by Ortiz in the 2nd….thanks to BRey 😁
Hang a star on that one for the Pirates $100 million man!
Ditto!
I don’t know how many more days of MLB per diem Josh Palacios is going to be handed
No excuse for standing there and looking for where the ball went. No F’ing excuse!!!
Not an excuse, but I think he must have thought the ball was caught. Only thing I can think of that would make him hesitate like that.
There’s absolutely no downside to running hard out of the box ever. Especially if you’re a AAAA type player.
Nope. He didn’t see where it went at first, so he decided to stand there and look for it, and didn’t really start running until he saw it bounce.
Well , let’s see how he responds in the bottom of the 2nd….
In the better news department, after giving up hits to the first two batters, Priester has stroked out the next six!
Stroked out six guys. Is he a Marvel Super Villain now? 🙃
Some kind of telekinesis……
Ortiz first pitch of game almost hit the batter. I had a bad feeling with that lack of command.
This could get ugly real quick.
Two runs with the way our offense is going….kind of ugly already!
You were saying.
Bad thing is Lorenzen sucks. Our hitters just suck more right now.
Yep
Hey Luis, throw the fastball!
Suddenly, I hear Lou Brown in my head….”Forget about the curve ball Ricky, give him the heater.”
Luis…woof.
Mason is one of the worse hitters in the league, didn’t throw him one fastball……
In some of the least surprising news, Kumar Rocker to get TJ. Should be back at the end of the 24 season.
Feel bad for the young man.
The Mets doctor(s) now vindicated.