Pittsburgh Pirates Lose Two Players to the Minnesota Twins

Pittsburgh Pirates catchers for one thousand Alex

The Pittsburgh Pirates lost two members of the organization to the Minnesota Twins on Saturday.  The Twins made the announcement that they had agreed to terms with Tim Wood on a minor-league deal.

Baseball America called the right hander the Triple-A Internaional Leagues’ best reliever in 2012.   The 29-year old Wood put up some nice numbers as the Indians rolled through the regular season in the IL.  The lanky righty saved 21 games over 54 appearances out of the bullpen with 8.2 strikeouts and three walks per nine innings.

The Pirates got some solid performance from Wood, but it was all in the minors except for a couple games in the bigs.  He failed to ever make the next step by proving himself when he pulled on the black and yellow.  We remember when he did get a shot, walks were his achilles heel as a Bucco.

Wood has struggled with injuries during his career, but since coming to the Pirates, he did put up some impressive numbers with the Buccos minor league system.    Three years ago, Wood pitched well for the Marlins in 18 games, but while pitching in the bigs with the Fish and Bucs, his ERA was triple nickels.  That’s cool if it’s your lottery number, but not good for a pitchers’ ERA.

The Bucs also lost catcher/outfielder Eric Fryer to the Twins on a minor-league deal.

Fryer rarely threw out runners–just four for the Indians, good for a 10 percent caught stealing rate.  The 10th round pick of the Brewers in the 2007 draft also rarely hit for Indy, batting just .204 in 65 games witha pathetic .247 slugging.

Yet the Pirates called him up to ride the pine down the stretch as the Buccos third catcher down the stretch.  It was almost baffling that Fryer, who played every position but catcher it seemed, was called up to the bigs while first-rounder Tony Sanchez played until he was injured in the playoffs for the Tribe.

Fryer’s biggest moment was when he took the hit from David Ortiz like a man.  We will always remember Ortiz saying he was a beast after that hit.  [trying to get a workable video is hit or miss for some reason, I trust it works for you]

The troubling part for us was that the 27-year old Ohio Sate alum never saw much time with the Pirates despite hitting .267 (without batting gloves) in a micro-thin sample size of 16 games with the Buccos.   We always thought Fryer had more, maybe he can catch a break with the Twins.