Pittsburgh Pirates: Winter League Updates Edition 3

News: The Caribbean Winter leagues are over a month into their respective seasons.  Here is our third update on how Pittsburgh Pirates players are performing.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of players from their organization playing in Winter Latin American Leagues. The majority of them are playing in the Dominican League, which is considered to be the most competitive.   The notable players in the Dominican Winter League are led by Jung Ho Kang, Starling Marte, Edwin Espinal, Montana DuRapau, Pablo Reyes, Edgar Santana, and Anderson Feliz.  In other Latin American Leagues are Elvis Escobar and Carlos Munoz.

 Dominican Winter League

In the last update, Jung Ho Kang was batting .147.  His numbers have gone down even more since that update.  The Pittsburgh Pirates “third baseman” is now batting a meager .121.  He is getting on-base at a .208 clip, which is pretty good considering where his average is at.  In his 19 games, he has struck out a ridiculous 26 times while walking seven times.  He has eight hits, two being doubles and one being a home run.  All in all, the time away from live baseball has seemed to really impact Kang’s abilities.  Hopefully, if he is able to return next season, he is getting the rust off now.

Another Pittsburgh Pirates player on Kang’s team is Edwin Espinal.  Although he technically became a minor league free agent a few days ago.  Still, it is expected that the Pittsburgh Pirates will retain him.  With the way Espinal is hitting so far, he definitely would be a nice depth piece to have back in Triple-A next year. His slash line thus far is .327/.415/.400.  He has played in 18 games and has 18 hits.  To go along with those hits, he has nine walks and only eight strikeouts.

After being suspended for half of the 2017 season, Starling Marte has decided to make up some of the missed at-bats by playing in the Dominican League.  Marte has played in eight games so far and is batting just .125/.147/.313.  Furthermore, he has four hits including a double, a triple, and a home run. Also, in prototypical Marte form, he has 11 strikeouts and one walk.

Prospects

Since the last update, Montana DuRapau‘s ERA has dropped down from over 10 to a flat 9.00.  He has thrown two scoreless appearances this past week, totaling for 1.1 scoreless innings. Edgar Santana has not pitched since the last update.  Pablo Reyes is batting .208/.283/.264. Anderson Feliz is doing very well batting .355/.459/.645 in 14 games.

Next: Minor League Notes

Other Leagues

Elvis Escobar is playing in Venezuela.  He has played in 25 games this season.  So far, he is batting .278 with a .330 on-base percentage.  The outfielder has 27 base hits, with four doubles.  He has struck out 19 times along with 11 walks.  Carlos Munoz is playing in Mexico’s Winter League.  He is batting an average of .291 with 15 runs batted in. The first base prospect has three doubles, a triple, and a home run.  He has walked ten times while only striking out nine times in 25 games.