Pittsburgh Pirates: 3 Internal Moves That Need to Be Made to Help in NL Central Race

The Pittsburgh Pirates sit in first place and are currently the only NL Central team with a winning record. The front office needs to take advantage of the opportunity to hold on to that lead and win the division. Here are three moves the Pirates must make to win the NL Central.

1. Promote Henry Davis

One of the easiest moves the Pirate front office can do to imporve this team and help secure this division is promoting their star prospect, Henry Davis. The Pittsburgh Pirates have a black hole in their lineup every night becasue of Austin Hedges and Jason Delay. It feels like they are playing with only 24 outs each game because of how bad these two are offensively.

Hedges is currently slashing .183/.240/.252 with an OPS of .492. Even if he was the best defensive catcher in major league baseball, that would not be justifiable for how bad he is at the plate. Delay on the other hand had a very hot, but fluky start to the season. In April, he slashed .390/.435/.610 with 6 extra base hits. Since then he has only 6 hits in May and June combined and has struck out 16 times.

Davis has been one of the best players in the Pirate farm system so far this season. The former number one overall pick started the season out in Double-A Altoona where he slashed .284/.433/.547 with 10 home runs, 7 doubles, and 1 triple in 41 games. He walked 17.1% of the time and only struck out 18.7% of the time. On June 6th, Davis was promoted to Triple-A Indianapolis and has not slowed down. In 7 games, he is slashing .280/.419/.520 with 3 extra base hits including a monster home run.

Adding Davis to this lineup would fix a lot problems. He is a guy you can put in the top half of the order and move guys like Connor Joe or even Carlos Santana down to balance it out. If he continues to produce with Indianapolis, fans need to see Henry Davis with the Pirates next home stand against the Chicago Cubs.