How will the Pirates use their 2 new players

PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Just hours into the trade late Friday night that brought Pirates manager Don Kelly a utility infielder and a left-handed reliever, he gave some ideas of how Jacob Gonzalez and Brandon Eisert could impact his team.

Sounds like Gonzalez has the potential to be a platoon at shortstop. The 24-year-old played mostly short in the minors although mostly first base in his rookie season with the White Sox.

“Will see as we go how that looks like,” Kelly said Saturday morning. “See Jacob Gonzalez at short and third, want to see him move around, see how he’s going, swings the bat. With Triolo and Gonzo (Nick Gonzales), Gonzales has been doing such a great job offensively, he’s going to be in there a lot and then we will fill it out with Jacob and Tri.”

The 2023 White Sox first-round pick had 19 home runs in 53 games at AAA this year and had a pair in 30 games with the Sox. Gonzalez had 53 home runs in his previous two minor league seasons.

“He’s shown a lot,” Kelly said. “First round pick a couple of years ago and then to show the improvement that he showed this year and the power that he’s showed, very intriguing.”

Eisert gives the Pirates not only another lefty in the bullpen, but maybe help for Mitch Keller as he struggles against left-handed hitters.

“He’s been really good against left-handers,” Kelly said. “Gives us other options if we wanted to open or do other things either with Eisert or with Monty. I just feel like it gives us better options because then, let’s say we open Eisert, we still have still have two guys. If we open Monty, we still have two lefties to deploy later in the game especially against some teams that have a lot of left-handed batters.”

Kelly said the book on Eisert is that he throws strikes and attacks lefties with some ‘underlying stuff that the front office saw is very intriguing’.

This season against lefties, Eisert has allowed a .174 average, .391 slugging, .646 OPS—compared to .295, .557 and .886 against right-handers.

“12 hours in, not even 12 hours into the trade, will see how everything works out, will see how everything plays out,” Kelly said.