Edward Olivares was in quite the slump with the Pirates.
His first half of the season was excellent, slashing .308/.357/.564 over his first 11 games, in addition to 3 home runs and 7 RBI. He was one of the better bats in the lineup for the Pirates, but as the team fell, so did he.
And Olivares did more than just fall, he completely tumbled. In his last 11 games, Olivares has gone .086/.180/.086 with no homers and just a single RBI, registering a mere 3 hits in 35 at bats.
It’s gotten even worse in more recent days, with him batting .063 in his 5 most recent games. The numbers for him have been increasingly going downhill and picking up speed in the process.
He certainly wasn’t alone in his batting struggles, but he did become one of the more popular picks to be sent to Triple-A Indianapolis in exchange for one of the Indians’ extremely hot bats.
Olivares did have an option left, and the Pirates would still have some depth in the outfield if the Pirates had called up someone like Nick Gonzales or Jake Lamb, or even someone like Ji Hwan Bae, who does have outfield experience.
But with one swing, Olivares might have just saved his spot on the major league roster…at least for now.
In Monday night’s game against the Los Angeles Angels, Olivares cleared the deck with a grand slam to give the Pirates a 4-0 lead.
Pretty grand indeed.
That was the first grand slam of Olivares’ career, and on the back of a complete game performance by starting pitcher Mitch Keller gave the Pirates a 4-1 win over the Angels.
That swing by Olivares was one of the most important swings of the season so far for the Pirates. I talked yesterday about how Oneil Cruz’s home run felt like a momentum-changing, perhaps season-changing hit for the Pirates.
This one feels similar, and it helped spark a second consecutive win for the Pirates, who improve to 17-19 on the season. Even though those were the only runs of the game, it was still some further showings of a Pirate batter actually being able to drive in runs with runners on scoring position, something that has been notoriously a challenge for them this season.
With his grand slam, Olivares pulls into a tie for second on the team in home runs, with 4. Only Cruz has more with 5. On the night as a whole, Olivares notched two hits, which improved his batting average on the season to .218 and his OPS to .679.
Both of those season figures are still far too low, but it was a very encouraging game for someone the Pirates have needed more out of, especially in the last few games. One can only hope it’s a sign for things to come for the man who batted .263 with the Kansas City Royals last season.
In the meantime however, even for an organization that makes as many questionable decisions as the Pirates, it’s pretty hard to see the Pirates optioning him to Triple-A Indianapolis in the immediate future. That grand slam was a big time boost and a game-winning hit for the Bucs, and he now has a two-game hitting streak after a hit yesterday vs Colorado.
I have to imagine that buys him at least a bit more time.
He still definitely needs to do more; we all love home runs, but a team can only have so many all-or-nothing players and hope to be competitive in Major League Baseball. They need more consistency out of him if he can stick around here.
I’m excited to see in the coming days if he can build on this momentum. It’s the first real signs of life we’ve seen from him in a little while and it should be interesting to see if he can continue that, or if this was another flash in the pan.
(Featured photo by (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
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