The Pittsburgh Pirates are winding down their disappointing 2019 season. There have been a lot of ups and downs, and that continued to be true this week.
Every time things start to look good for the Pittsburgh Pirates things quickly go south. The team has played better over the last couple weeks compared to what they were a month ago. but the Bucs and their fans got some negative news this week, although there was at least one little bright spot that came of it.
The biggest piece of news to come out from the Pittsburgh Pirates this week is in regards to right fielder Gregory Polanco. Polanco was supposed to be a big part of the 2019 offense but he has barely played at all this year. The team rushed him back this spring and inserted him back into the lineup much earlier than expected. Instead, just 42 games into his season, Polanco saw his shoulder surgery regress and found himself back on the Injured List; that was back in the first half of the season and he has not played since.
The Pittsburgh Pirates announced that Polanco would be shut down for the rest of the year and get a series of PRP injections to help heal his shoulder. This obviously is not good news as it looks a lot like Polanco will be spending another off-season working to rehab his shoulder and not his baseball craft.
Then to make matters worse, the Pittsburgh Pirates found out they would be losing another one of their outfielders for the rest of the year. The team just called up outfielder Jason Martin, who was up earlier this season, and lost him after just one game. Martin drew a walk against the Marlins in the series opener and ended up scoring the game-tying run. However, when Martin slid into home plate, the Marlins pitcher fell on his shoulder and separated it. Martin will not need surgery but the team has decided that he needs to sit out the rest of the year.
Those were the two negatives that came out in the last couple days with the Bucs. There is something for Pittsburgh Pirates fans to be happy about. The team has recalled starting pitching prospect James Marvel. Marvel had one of the better seasons of any of the Pirates minor leaguers and definitely deserves an opportunity to show what he can do at the big league level this September.
The 2015 36th round draft pick out of Duke pitched between Double-A and Triple-A this season. After a strong start at Double-A, Marvel’s final 11 starts came with the Indianapolis Indians, where he pitched to a flawless 7-0 record with a 2.67 earned run average. The 25-year-old will now get a chance to show what he could bring to the team in 2020.