Pirates Twins: The Ugly Bucs Spring Continues

The Pittsburgh Pirates face the Minnesota Twins today with A.J. Burnett and his 13.50 ERA on the mound.   Yeh, it’s early, we know.   The Bucs are 2-9 in the last eleven spring training games.

Scheduled to follow Burnett are mostly right handed pitchers.  The impressive Jared Hughes has pitched four innings and given up just two hits with five strikeouts, southpaw Andy Oliver, and right handers Kyle Waldrop and Vin Mazzaro have seen limited action.  Mazzaro has logged three innings with one walk and a strikeout while Oliver has worked just 1.1 innings.

The Bucs lineup is in desperate need of some production.  The Pirates are hitting .251 with a pathetic .321 on-base and .371 slugging thus far this spring.  The weak offense has just seven homers with almost zero coming from likely suspects.  Gaby Sanchez has two, Clint Barmes, Jose Tabata, Jordy Mercer, Jared Goedert and Felix Pie have one.  In case you can’t see the lineup above here it is:

Alex Presley in left field

Travis Snider in right field

Andrew McCutchen will step away from the ‘Cutch Cam’ and play center today.  Cutch has two hits in 13 at bats and has walked three times.

Clint Robinson, owner of a .231 spring average filled with strikeouts bats cleanup for some reason.

Russell Martin returns to action as the DH.

Jared Goedert will play third base.

Tony Sanchez will be behind the dish.  Sanchez has earned four walks early in camp and rocks an .829 OPS.

Andy Hernandez replaced Chase d’Arnaud who injured his thumb in warmups.   Hernandez is having a nice spring with five hits in just 12 at-bats.

Josh Harrison will play second base.