Notes: Polanco sidelined at Pirates camp

PITTSBURGH -- Right fielder Gregory Polanco was not in either lineup during the Pirates’ intrasquad scrimmage at PNC Park on Wednesday night, and manager Derek Shelton confirmed afterward that Polanco has not been on the field for the last two days of Pittsburgh’s Summer Camp workouts.

“We’ve just kept him away for the last couple days,” Shelton said. “Nothing I’m going to discuss.”

Polanco joins closer Keone Kela and top third-base prospect Ke’Bryan Hayes as the Pirates’ third significant player to miss time for undisclosed reasons. While Polanco has only been away from PNC Park for two days, Kela and Hayes have yet to take the field with Opening Day a little more than a week away.

Without Polanco involved, fourth outfielder Guillermo Heredia played right field for one team and Socrates Brito, who recently returned to camp after previously testing positive for COVID-19, manned right for the other squad. The Pirates only have five dedicated outfielders on their camp roster -- Brito, Heredia, Polanco, Jarrod Dyson and Bryan Reynolds -- so Major League assistant Tim McKeithan had to move between left and center field on Wednesday night.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, teams cannot reveal details about a player’s health unless that player provides permission to do so.

If Polanco is sidelined, Heredia would presumably be their backup plan in right field. Heredia can play all three outfield spots, and he’s hit left-handed pitchers well throughout his career. The Pirates also have a handful of utility players who can handle right field, including José Osuna, JT Riddle and Phillip Evans.

Polanco has provided one of the more encouraging storylines of this camp, as he’s hit well while leading by example with an energetic attitude as the team’s longest-tenured player. But his unexpected absence, and the uncertainty surrounding it, further underscores the challenges the Pirates face when trying to shape their roster for Opening Day.

On Wednesday afternoon, general manager Ben Cherington said he expects that “the players who are in Pittsburgh right now would be the ones to make up the Opening Day roster.” But what about the players like Kela and Hayes, who are in Pittsburgh but aren’t active?

Shelton named Kela their closer after their first Spring Training workout, and he’s expected to solidify the back end of their bullpen. Given the time he’s missed, though, will he be ready for Opening Day?

"No update,” Cherington said of Kela. “Certainly expect he's going to be an important part of the team this year and excited about what we're seeing with a bunch of the pitchers who have been on the field and been on the sim games and some guys we think have even taken a step forward since Spring Training. We'll continue to evaluate that. We're encouraged with what we've seen from the guys out there pitching innings."

Cherington said they “haven’t talked about any deadline” as far as determining the Opening Day readiness of players who haven’t yet taken the field for camp workouts. But over the next week, they must trim their current roster down to the 30 players who will line up on the field at Busch Stadium on July 24.

“Probably just need to continue to make that a daily conversation and keep the players’ health and safety first and foremost and make sure that as guys are available that we make sure we put ‘em in a good spot to be ready to compete against Major League players, which is not an easy thing to do,” Cherington said.

Around the horn

• Unofficially, starter Trevor Williams threw 97 pitches over six innings in Wednesday night’s intrasquad game. Williams, Joe Musgrove and Derek Holland should head into the season built up to throw at least 100 pitches the first time through the rotation, which was not necessarily a guarantee as pitchers left Spring Training and went into quarantine.

Shelton praised pitching coach Oscar Marin, bullpen coach Justin Meccage and the individual starters for coming into camp prepared to work deep into games.

“I think it’s a credit to our starters, because they were ready. Talking to other people around the league, I think there’s guys that are still in the ramp-up process,” Shelton said. “Those guys did a really good job. They came in. They’ve executed. To have them at that pitch point in this timeframe, that’s a definite bonus for us.”

• Setup man Kyle Crick, a candidate to close if Kela is unavailable, made his second game appearance on Wednesday. The first batter he faced reached on an error by the analytics staffer manning center field, then Crick induced two more popups and struck out Dyson to end a long at-bat.

“Tonight he actually got four outs because we dropped a ball in center,” Shelton said. “It was good to see. I liked the sharpness.”

• Reliever Richard Rodríguez threw only two pitches before giving way to Michael Feliz in Wednesday’s game, but it wasn’t an injury or a case of Shelton flaunting the lack of a three-batter-minimum rule in their intrasquad game. The Pirates are trying to get their relievers used to pitching consecutive days, or a certain number of times over a certain period, so Rodríguez made an intentionally brief appearance.

“It’s just kind of ramping up their volume to get a little closer to a regular-season situation,” Shelton said.