General manager Ben Cherington cautioned that the Pittsburgh Pirates will likely not add new players to their 30-major league roster through free agency or exchanges before next week’s first game of the season in St. Louis, despite of having the third lowest payroll in the majors.
“I would expect the players who are in Pittsburgh right now to be on the opening day roster,” Cherington said Wednesday in a Zoom call with reporters. “It doesn’t mean there won’t be any changes over time, but without waiting for anyone who isn’t currently in Pittsburgh.”
One of the top free agents, outfielder Yasiel Puig, reportedly agreed to a deal with the Atlanta Braves after Nick Markakis chose not to play this season. Only the Baltimore Orioles and Miami Marlins have lower payrolls than the Pirates.
With two spots available in the 60-man player pool, Cherington chose a pair of top prospects playing the same position to go to his alternate training site in Altoona. Short stops Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero will join the 20-player training group at Peoples Natural Gas Field, home of its Double A affiliate, the Altoona Bend.
“We would hope to add a couple of guys soon,” said Cherington. “Our hope is that it will be soon.”
Cherington said Gonzales and Peguero “are on track to hit 60,” pending the results of their covid-19 tests. The Pirates had two starts on their 60-man roster after reliever Edgar Santana received an 80-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs and pitcher Hector Noesi opted for family reasons.
Gonzales, 21, was the Pirates’ first-round pick (No. 7 overall) in the MLB Draft last month outside of New Mexico state and signed for a $ 5.4 million bonus. The 5-foot-10, 190-pound was the 2019 NCAA batting champion, averaging .432. Last spring, he slashed .448 / .610 / 1,155 and led the NCAA in home runs (12), RBIs (36), runs (28) and total bases (67) in 16 games.
Peguero, 19, was part of Arizona’s comeback at the Starling Mars exchange in January, along with launcher Brennan Malone. Considered a top-10 prospect for the Pirates, the 6-1, 160-pound reduced .326 / .382 / .485 with 11 doubles, five home runs and 38 RBIs in 60 games divided between Class A low and rookie ball. .
Cherington said the Pirates have prescribed training plans for minor league pitchers and position players, and baseball operations personnel continue to evaluate the best way to use their group of players to support a major league roster that will open the season with 30 players, but will drop to 28 after two weeks and 26 after one month. That also helps explain why the Pirates didn’t add a pitcher, such as 19-year-old righties Malone or Quinn Priester, their 2019 first-round pick, to the 60-player pool.
“I think in the case of Nick and Liover, we feel that looking through possible additions with those points that we had open, maybe weighing the position player a little bit more,” Cherington said, “believing that with the pitcher, when Less in theory, we can create a remote practice that is a little bit closer to what we created in Altoona. It’s harder for a hitter to do that.
“That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t add pitching over the summer, too, but that was a factor.” Obviously, both of these guys are important players to the Pirates, so we wanted to make sure we had a chance to spend time with them in person. ”
Kevin Gorman is a writer for the Tribune-Review. You can contact Kevin by email at [email protected] or by Twitter.
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