Pittsburgh Pirates: Cal Mitchel Goes Deep, Quiet Night for Others

The Pittsburgh Pirates Minor League affiliates are starting their seasons this week.  What kind of start did their Triple-A team get off to?

Baseball is finally back.  Tomorrow the Pittsburgh Pirates will open their 2022 season on the road against the Cardinals.  It will be an interesting matchup as the Cardinals are entering their final season with Yadier Molina and most likely Adam Wainwright.

In the meantime, the Pittsburgh Pirates Triple-A affiliate started their season last night.  The Indianapolis Indians took the field against the Omaha Storm Chasers of the Kansas City Royals Organization.  It was a relatively quiet game as the Indians went down by a score of 4-1.

The only piece of offense came from Cal Mitchell.  The former 2nd round pick showed off some of his raw power potential hitting his first home run of the year.  He took 25-year-old left-handed pitcher Marcelo Martinez deep which was the team’s only run on the night.  Here is the clip courtesy of the Indianapolis Indians Twitter page:

Mitchell ended the night going 1 for 4. Mason Martin and Canaan Smith-Njigba had multi-hit days, both going 2 for 4.  That is obviously good to see but also when the team only scores 1 run on a home run there isn’t going to be much in terms of offensive numbers. Travis Swaggerty had the only other hit on the team.  The outfielder went 1 for 5 in his first professional game since missing most of last season with a torn labrum.

Both Oneil Cruz and Rodolfo Castro failed to record a hit.  Cruz went 0 for 3 with a walk while Castro went 0 for 4.  Between the 2 of them, they struck out 3 times and left 7 total runners on base. Obviously, these are two of the more important bats to follow this year in Triple-A.  After all both, but even more specifically Cruz needs to perform and push their way up to the Pittsburgh Pirates roster.