PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Pirates GM Ben Cherington had information on a few key injuries. He also talked about the potential of changing the bullpen. Here are highlights of what he said on the Pirates Insider Show on 93.7 The Fan Sunday before the homestand ended against the Reds.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Injuries<\/p>\n
1B Spencer Horwitz is dealing with a Grade one to two hamstring injury and they are looking at weeks, not days for his return. They have to see how he responds to rehab before knowing timetable for a return OF Oneil Cruz is heading to Florida soon to ramp up his rehab from a hand\/wrist injury. Cruz is reporting improvement and they are ramping up his progression. Likely he would return after the All-Star Break or by the end of July. RHP Wilber Dotel pitched an inning in his first rehab appearance, throwing at AA Altoona and wasn\u2019t feeling \u2018quite as good\u2019 so they pulled a potential two-inning appearance to one inning. Dotel is back in Pittsburgh being evaluated. <\/p>\n
No quick fix for the bullpen<\/p>\n
For those looking for an imminent trade to improve the bullpen, Cherington said on the Pirates Insider Show on 93.7 The Fan with Jason Mackey, that\u2019s not likely to occur.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrades are inevitably going to happen at some point, but we are two weeks from the draft and usually, and there is a good chance really, that nothing will pick up until after the draft,\u201d Cherington said.<\/p>\n
Cherington said the talent is there for internal improvement. They\u2019ve dug deep into it, as Cherington put it \u2018get under the hood\u2019 and made sure they know the exact reason for failure\u2014whether that\u2019s bad luck at times, lack of execution or potentially that they need a different player.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the same stuff,\u201d Cherington said generally on 93.7 The Fan. \u201cI think urgency, we should have urgency. It goes back to what I said before, we each have our own job to do. I have my own job to do. The staff have their job. The pitchers have their job. The catchers have their job. The defenders have their job, every one of those people have some job to do to make sure this improves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cherington said he hopes at some point they will \u2018add guys to the team\u2019, but said again it\u2019s early.<\/p>\n
A stat appeared on social media Saturday stating the Pirates would have the best record in Major League Baseball if games ended after seven innings. According to this report, the Bucs would be 55-27.<\/p>\n
Paul Skenes velo<\/p>\n
On the concerns that the velocity is down for NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes, Cherington said they do track the velocity over time. They are looking at recovery, and Skenes needs to self-report on any issue and they study biomechanical input to make sure they\u2019ve covered every potential element.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important thing is we aren\u2019t getting anything from him that there is any physical issue,\u201d Cherington said on the Pirates Insider Show with Jason Mackey on 93.7 The Fan. I think zooming out, my personal opinion is, this is fairly standard for starting pitchers over time, including elite ones. There are smaller stretches of time where there is some small regression that can be for any number of reasons and then three months later they feel different. It\u2019s not uncommon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next ace?<\/p>\n
RHP Seth Hernandez has allowed one earned run in his last three games with Greensboro. Cherington said it\u2019s exciting to see. He noted there was a little stretch where he got out of whack with his delivery, but he made a quick adjustment and they are working to keep him in a strong spot as he continues in High A.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to remind ourselves that he is 12 months out from high school prom,\u201d Cherington said on 93.7 The Fan. \u201cThis has happened really fast and we want to position him for a really long career. He\u2019s off to a great start.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old is 6-1 with a 2.02 ERA, 62.1 innings, 8 HR allowed, 28 walks, 100 strikeouts, 0.99 WHIP, .159 batting average against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Pirates GM Ben Cherington had information on a few key injuries. He also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3307,50482,49,48,462,18214,504,509,223307,36761,82],"class_list":["post-767252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-ben-cherington","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-oneil-cruz","tag-paul-skenes","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-seth-hernandez","tag-spencer-horwitz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}