PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Ke’Bryan Hayes going to the 60-day injured list, not the only injury news for the Pirates on Sunday.
First baseman and team leading RBI producer, home run hitter Colin Moran goes on the 10-day injured list after a left groin injury took him out of the game on Saturday. Moran is second on the team in hits and batting average to Adam Frazier.
“It’s huge,” Adam Frazier said. “Hopefully he isn’t out too long. He was really hitting his stride and he really hadn’t even got going. He was taking a lot of strides forward. It’s going to be a huge loss for the lineup.”
“He has been one of our better hitters and had consistent at bats,” said Pirates manager Derek Shelton. “He’s been driving the ball, creating run scoring opportunities, driving guys in. When you lose a guy like that it has some impact.”
Along with Moran out at least 10 days, outfielder Bryan Reynolds missed Sunday with some lower-body soreness. It’s not believed to be a long-term problem.
“Those guys banged up I guess it is more important for me to do some stuff,” Frazier said. “I feel like I haven’t had a RBI in about a month. I really haven’t been doing a lot to contribute to us scoring runs. Can’t really do anything more than what I’m doing. Keep the same approach at the plate, start trying to do too much. That’s not a recipe for success.”
“We are going to have to figure out ways to be creative with our lineup,” Shelton said. “We just have some other guys we will put in different spots and they will need to step up into roles.”
“It’s going to be a 1 through 9 kind of deal,” Frazier said. “Continue to play hard, we should probably use some more hits-and-runs and bunts and stuff like that. We’ve had guys on base. We’ve hit some balls hard. Haven’t really had a lot of luck to show for that.”
Shelton said Todd Frazier, batting .032 as a Pirate, will get a majority of the looks at first base. Phillip Evans and Erik Gonzalez may also get a start or two at first.
Pirates called up outfielder Troy Stokes, Junior from AAA to take Moran’s spot on the roster.