The Pirates are set to promote infielder Gift Ngoepe to the majors for the first time, as Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports on Twitter. Upon making his MLB debut, Ngoepe will become the first player born in Africa ever to appear in the majors, as MLB.com’s Adam Berry notes on Twitter.
Ngoepe, who is represented by Josh Chetwynd and Steve Schneider of Elite Sports Group, had already been added to Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster in the fall of 2015 to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. The 27-year-old South African has nevertheless remained at Triple-A in the meantime, awaiting an opportunity.
Though he doesn’t offer much with the bat, Ngoepe is considered an excellent defender and has shown some base-stealing ability at times. (He has swiped 88 bags in the minors, though he hasn’t been very efficient.) Ngoepe is slashing .241/.308/.379 over his first 66 plate appearances of the current campaign.
It has been quite a week for the international market-to-Pittsburgh pipeline. Just two days ago, the Bucs made Dovydas Neverauskas the first Lithuanian player ever to reach the big leagues. For more on Ngoepe’s unlikely path to the majors, check out this recent piece from Berry and Carrie Muskat.
This is so cool. The first Lithuanian player and the first African player in the same week. Good job, Pirates, finding talent in the forgotten corners of the world.
Nothing against him but they need outfield help not more infielders with low batting average.
But his name is Gift…what can there possibly be to complain about?
have you seen the infielders play this season? Harrison, Hanson, Fraizier, Mercer have all been horrid on defense.
Along with Fraizier going on the DL they where a man down and the possibility of freese being injured(? never heard the story on that) they also need infielders. They where running one position player short.
Freese has a sore right hammy. I heard on Pgh local radio this morning. He is day to day. You are right about the defense on the infield. It is almost like they are all trying to hard right now. Harrison booted a sure DP ball on Sunday that would have ended the game. Got more interesting before they closed that one out. Maybe a steadier hand for a game or two will settle the rest down.
He will play 2nd and Harrison will move out to RF
You see that for sure or are you giving an opinion? Either way, sounds good to me.
I look forward to a lot of great puns with this guy’s name when he hits home runs and stuff.
Or errors
ah yes a gift to the other team
Interesting thing I seen on Twitter; Ngoepe and Neverauskas were now called up at the same time and last year they were arrested at the same time lol
Boy, add in Kang’s troubles as well as Marte’s recent suspension and the Pirates have a nice little melting pot of international delinquents….
From what I remember, sounds like it was a stupid bar scuffle. You know, the stuff that used to happen all the time in the old days but never got out because of the lack of this here interwebs thingy and news traveled way slower 30+ years ago.
You looked at Ngoepe’s RBI and SB, not SB and CS.
He didn’t have many SB last year and has none so far this year.
Yeesh … fixing it now.
No worries Jeff…Everyone makes a mistake. You’re doing a good job. Thanks for the fantastic read.
No time like the present
If I recall correctly, they had signed couple of Indians not too long ago. Are they just going for bunch of firsts, instead of WS?
Too bad neither of them panned out. Maybe one of them might’ve reached the majors this year.
Gift’s specialty is his glove. if that holds true and he can get anywhere close to league average at the plate it really would be a gift.
Always interesting to see players expanding the game like this. It’d be great for baseball to boom in Lithuania or South Africa.
The Pirates have nothing on offense. Just nothing. And this was predictable.
Without Kang, there is no real power threat in the lineup. And they have no speed or baserunning skills, so they can’t play small ball.
Their only chance on offense is play station to station but the lineup is made up of many free swingers with no plate discipline so that doesn’t work very often either.
Bell has shown a little life lately after the knee surgery set him behind and Osuna has done really well in his very limited sample size after mashing during spring training. So that’s something.
Alen Hanson is useless so hopefully Gift can carve out the old Sean Rodriguez role of a late inning replacement, which is more than Hanson offers. Maybe Frazier and Gift can tandem start at 2B the way they do with Bell and Jaso at 1B.
How is Hanson nothing? How many AB’s has he had in the majors?
Don’t even know why he’s up in the bigs if they don’t know how to utilize him.. wasting away what could be more development time…
Another problem they have early on in the season is not enough good righties in the pen.. far too many lefties, albeit some decent ones..
U could see from a mile away what Chris carter was going to do when we played the Yankees and he pinch hit against a lefty.. leaving in a lefty to face carter confuses me
He’s up because he’s out of options.
Chris Carter would have been a nice bench piece for the Pirates. The entire team might not hit 42 homers this year at this pace.
SP’s have more AB’s than Hanson
Hanson is ‘useless’ Bc he’s not used… AB’s he could be getting r going to Jaso groundouts and weak pop flys
Between Neverauskas, Ngoepe, and even their trial with the guys from India, seeing Pittsburgh trying their hand at untapped baseball regions is great for the game.
I hope both these guys stick so we can continue to see baseball grow globally.
If I remember correctly, they also had a pitcher from the “North Pole” around the same time they signed the Indian pitchers. I think he was from North Pole, Alaska.
Yeah, but he had a claus in his contract and he returned to the North Pole. I think it was a Santa Claus
The United Nations of baseball
Told the buccos fans that once they lost Neilsy and Pedro that this team had no power and we wouldn’t make the playoffs..
This team can’t even keep a homegrown hometown talent
As for Pedro.. I’ll take 30 homers/30 errors any year on this team
Hell we lost to the Cubs who had 2 hits last night.. that’s downright pathetic
Pedro yes, Walker, his back went out again last year and he has not been so hot this year at all yet. He even has 2 errors in only 18 games which is high for him
Agreed…Should have signed Walker instead of Harrison.
Yeah they would have had to spend large money if they would have resigned Neil only to have his back give out again. Right now Neil is hitting .197 with 2 HR and 2 E. Harrison is hitting .308 with the same 2 HR and 2 E. Yeah, Neil is way better… smh. If the Bucs would have agreed to what he wanted and extended him, everyone would be screaming what an idiot Huntington is for throwing all that money on a guy who is stinking right now coming off of a bad back.
It’s like 20 games in haha. I have no problem with j-hay all day
But still, it’s whether u want contact vs power. I will give u the injury concerns and $$ u raise a good point
My issue like everyone else’s is the ownership’s reluctance to spend any money
But Neil for Niese and bastardo?? (If I remember correctly) yikes.. almost as bad as the liriano trade..
I have nothing bad to say bout cutch, NH (even if he has to make the occasional bad trade for financial reasons), or Hurdle.. they finally got the organization to the playoffs..
Ownership on the other hand..
You realize that the other teams know of Neil’s back issues and he was on an expiring contract last year. If Niese does not hurt his knee, who knows. No team was going to give a great return for Walker last year. Considering neither player lasted the year last year, at least the Pirates had Bastardo back for Niese and he was decent last year. No way should the Pirates have spent the money on Walker. If he can’t play, he has no power potential . I know it is only 20 games this year but the Mets appear to have made a poor decision in paying almost $18 million for Walker if he does not rebound soon. Time will tell if it was truly wise or truly poor decision making.
I’m cool with J-hay as a small market team and not paying Neil that type of money
I’m more whining about the buccos not opening the wallet for anybody
And it was a crap salary dump deal.. at least get something useful for him.. niese was alright I guess but not with us.. bastardo was alright his first go around with the Pirates.. not now
If u trade Neil walker then get some sort of prospect back.. not that crap
Just like trading liriano to the blue Jays.. get something back.. not just crap… I know it’s a salary dump but cmon… hell, we even gave away a decent catcher prospect to complete the salary dump..
Those r poor moves