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Winter Ball: 10 Pittsburgh Pirates In Deep
By Tom Smith
We took a look at the numerous Pittsburgh Pirates playing this off season around the world. Not much salt is put in any of the numbers due to very small sample size hence we decided to see if some of the struggles were shown during the season as well. Unfortunately in a few cases several players are showing indications that poor tendencies are developing.
1. SS Ronny Cedeno hasn’t earned at least one walk in 78 at-bats? He does have four homers. He walked just 23 times in 468 at-bats for the Pirates.
2. SS Pedro Ciriaco has just ten hits in his 49 at-bats after having three hits in his cup of coffee with the Bucs this fall. Ciriaco hasn’t walked since joining Charlie Morton in the Dominican and has whiffed eleven times. He opened a lot of eyes when he walked just 12 times in 482 at-bats in 2010.
3. SS Argenis Diaz has at least walked four times as he posted his .429 OPS this winter. Diaz has never been known for his stick, but even by Diaz’s standards his eight hits in 43 at-bats is light.
4. Benji Gonzalez is the fourth Pirates shortstop getting off slowly this winter. He has just four hits to go with his .476OPS and five whiffs in 25 at-bats. Gonzalez posted a .579OPS with the Power in 2010.
5. Jason Jaramillo has a .217 average while posting an OPS of .549. JHammer appears to have lost some of that line drive ability he flashed in Pittsburgh after a paltry .288 OBP and a .261 SLG at AAA Indy.
6. Andy LaRoche has just 13 hits in 70 at-bats. What the hell happened?
7. Starling Marte has struck out 15 times in 58 at-bats. Marte has two extra base hits. One was a homer.
8. Tony Sanchez went cold in the Arizona Fall League, struggled to throw out runners, and made far too few blog posts for our liking.
9. Rogelios Noris continues to pile up the strikeouts. He played LF for the West Virginia Power this past season and Noris struckout 144 times in 407 at-bats.
10. Lastings Milledge has cooled off after a hot start. Thrilledge is hitting .229 in his past ten games with nine strikeouts.
The Pirates could use each one of these players in their system to show improvement. All have flashed promise and could be used to improve the big league club whether it be with their own performances (notably Cedeno, Milledge and Sanchez) and some could be packaged in upcoming trades. But it’s simply hard to gain interest from other teams if these trends continue.