Pittsburgh Pirates Announce 60-Man Player Pool and Taxi Squad

As we near baseball season, the Pittsburgh Pirates have announced their 60-man player pool and taxi squad roster earlier today.

Earlier today, the Pittsburgh Pirates announced their Summer Camp 60-man player pool plus their taxi squad roster. Many players that were optioned earlier during the original spring training such as J.T. Brubaker, Geoff Hartlieb, Cole Tucker, and Ke’Bryan Hayes have been added to the 60-man. The roster includes 16 right handed pitchers, five left handed pitchers, three catchers, 10 infielders, and five outfielders. You can read the full list here.

The Pirates seem to be reinforcing their all-defense strategy with many of their taxi squad members glove first guys like Will Craig, Travis Swaggerty, Christian Kelley, and Jared Oliva being part of the roster. However, there are a handful of more surprising names that are part of the taxi squad. The Pirates also included Oneil Cruz, Mason Martin, Ji-Hwan Bae and Rodolfo Castro on the roster. All of which are younger than 23, and two of the three haven’t made it past A-Ball yet. Some other names worth mentioning that are part of their taxi roster include pitching prospects Cody Bolton, Cody Ponce and Nick Mears. Right now, the only player on the taxi squad with MLB experience is pitcher James Marvel who has 17.1 innings under his belt all coming from the 2019 season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will also now be looking, both internally and externally, for the the final spot on the 60-man with the recent Edgar Santana suspension. They could add someone from their taxi squad to the 60-man, and sign a free agent prospect, possibly one of the ones they released before the 2020 draft. They could also sign a veteran player that is currently a free agent to fill that final hole.

This will be the team that currently will go into summer training before the 2020 season starts. By the end of camp, 30 of the players plus three taxi squad members will break camp with the team at the end of July. While it can be very difficult to understand how this taxi squad, and how the roster will work this year, you can find a detailed explanation of that here.