A day at Pirate City

If you’ve never been to Pirate City on a spring training day after the Major Leaguers break camp, it’s kind of hard to describe. Maybe the best way to put it is, “baseball sensory overload.” My brother and I arrived a little after 10 AM yesterday and the minor leaguers’ workouts, which began around eight, were in full swing. There was pitchers’ fielding practice, players running, general fielding practice, situational fielding practice which was doubling as base running practice, and batting practice all going on on various different fields all at the same time. There are well over 150 minor leaguers in camp with nameless jerseys on, which means there are duplicate numbers all over the place and the biggest challenge is often figuring out just who the heck you’re looking at unless you’re Tim from Pirate Prospects, who’s down here at Bradenton this week as well and who can tell you with a glance on the roster sheet that that’s Kevin Kleis, 27th round pick out of a California JuCo, on the mound against the Candian high school baseball academy. 

One thing that is immediately apparent from just milling around during practice is that holy crap, most of the Pirates’ pitching prospects are tall. Not like 6’1″/6’2″ tall, but like 6’5″/6’6″ tall, almost as a rule. The aforementioned Kleis is 6’8″. Below is a shot of (from left to right) Hunter Strickland (6’5″), Tim Alderson (6’6″), and Ryan Beckman (6’4″) with Michelangelo Trinidad, a first baseman that stands 5’11”.
Between the time I arrived at Pirate City and about noon, my brother and I milled between the three main workouts, just trying to figure out who was who. The Pirates had sent a huge chunk of their A ball roster out to Sarasota to scrimmage the Phillies’ A ballers, but the Double-A and Triple-A guys were all there for a scrimmage against the Phillies’ players of the same level, plus there was a group of very young players from last year’s draft and from Latin America around to scrimmage the Canadian team. Like I said, overwhelming. One person I knew without a roster, though, was Luis Heredia. I guess 6’6″ 16-year olds are hard to miss. He wasn’t throwing, but instead doing some fielding practice, working on throws to bases, etc. 
On one of the other fields, Starling Marte and Brock Holt were among those taking batting practice. It’s easy to see why the scouts love Marte; not only is he blazingly fast, as noted from Monday’s game at McKechnie, but he’s not short like Andrew McCutchen or impossibly skinny like Pedro Ciriaco. He looks like the sort of guy you’d expect to be a good baseball prospect. That only gets you so far, obviously, but again, it’s no mystery why someone like Rene Gayo, who’s job is to find potential, raves about him. 
A little before noon the Pirate minor leaguers started peeling off before lunch (the games started at one) and Chris Snyder, Garrett Jones, and Josh Fields all came out to take some swings before they played in the afternoon minor league games. They were joined by Gregg Ritchie, Clint Hurdle, and Jeff Bannister, who oversaw BP. 
I was introduced to Hurdle by Trevor Gooby (who conducted my tour of Pirate City last year and who’s been awesome again this year in making sure that I have everything that I need while I’m down here in Bradenton; yesterday he stood around and talked baseball with me, Tim, and the PG’s Colin Dunlap for probably 20 minutes) a bit later; after a brief hello Trevor asked Hurdle if today was supposed to be his off day and as he walked away, Hurdle yelled back at us, “There are no off days when you lose 105 games.” Of course that’s at least a little bit rhetoric, but Hurdle put in a late day at McKechnie on Monday with Pedro Alvarez and a few other guys taking post-game BP, then he was back out at Pirate City for most of the time I was there on Tuesday, watching batting practice, standing up above everyone during the minor league games in the little observational stand, and pacing back and forth during the games, talking to players and coaches. That kind of stuff is pretty hard not to like, even for a guy that’s dubious about the sort of difference a manager might make. 

Once the minor league games start back up, things get even tougher to follow. As mentioned, there were three games yesterday. I focused mostly on the Double-A and Triple-A games since I didn’t recognize many of the really young kids in the game with the Canadian academy. Jeff Karstens started the Triple-A game and Sean Gallagher started the Double-A game. Between them, Snyder catching Karstens, and Garrett Jones and Josh Fields batting in both games, the games were really dominated by non-minor leaguers, which was a little disappointing, if only because I wanted to see more of the young guys. Jones looked a little better, just in terms of timing, than he did at McKechnie on Monday, and it was pretty interesting to me to see Fields getting so many at bats this late in the spring. Here’s Snyder batting in the Triple-A game. He’s a surprisingly tall guy in person.

Brock Holt lead off the Double-A game with a double and then Robbie Grossman drove him in with a nice single. Here’s Grossman right before his single. Yes, the fence got annoying after a while while trying to take pictures.
While I was watching that game, I saw Chase D’Arnaud rip a double into the right-center gap in the Triple-A game. D’Arnaud can really fly around the bases. He’s in the background of this picture of Jeff Karstens, who seemed to be pitching well in the Triple-A game, though I wasn’t really paying much attention to those sorts of results. 
Tony Sanchez also batted later in the Triple-A game (he may have caught after Snyder was done for the day, I’m not sure), dropping a single over the shortstops head. This isn’t a great picture, but you can see that he holds his hands up pretty high in his batting stance. 
Wrapping back around to the Double-A game, here are pictures of Evan Chambers and Starling Marte batting. I could be wrong, but I don’t think either of them had a hit while I was watching. 

After Gallagher struggled quite a bit with his control, Dan McCutchen followed him onto the mound. Finally after McCutchen pitched, Jeff Locke came in. I’m pretty sure the shortstop in the background here is Brock Holt. 
What I was mostly interested in from Locke was his velocity, so while I was taking pictures I had my brother wander over to peek at the radar guns behind the plate. He said Locke’s fastball was registering 92-94 pretty regularly on the Pirates’ gun, which is good to see. 
Just for fun, here’s a picture of Calvin Anderson towering over the world taken by my brother: 
The other really cool part about these games is that there are obviously way more players than there is space in the games and it appeared that everyone (at least in terms of minor leaguers) that wasn’t shipped out to Clearwater was watching. There aren’t any real dugouts, so while the space between the two fields that the Pirates and Phillies were on was roped off, there are always bunch of players sitting with fans and milling around. That really drives home the fact that most of these players are 18-24 years old and more like college kids than professional athletes. 
I also love this shot taken by my brother of the thin divider between Clint Hurdle and Gregg Ritchie and just some guy watching the game. There are contstantly coaches milling around during these games, alwasy talking to the players, giving instruction, etc. 

I don’t really want to make too much of any individual performances, especially by the hitters, because I only recognized a few of the players, prospects like Phillipe Aumont, ex-Pirates like Brandon Moss, and Triple-A warriors that I see in Durham like Tagg Bozied. Oh, and Ryne Sandberg, Phillies’ Triple-A manager. Brock Holt hit the ball hard a few times and Starling Marte sprayed line drives all over the field in BP, but these games are even tougher to find meaning in than big league Spring Training games.  
Still, it’s an awesome experience to see all of these prospects that are mostly names and stat-lines and mugshots in person, throwing and swinging and running. They’re all very real, and I think we’ll be seeing quite a few of them in the next couple of years.