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Pirates All 40: How Valuable Can Liover Peguero Be?

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Pittsburgh Pirates- Liover Peguero

This is the one in a series of stories looking at members of the Pittsburgh Pirates 40-man roster.

With the departure of Diego Castillo and Kevin Newman, the Pittsburgh Pirates have got themselves an interesting situation in the middle infield.

Other than Rodolfo Castro and Oneil Cruz, there isn’t much on their major league roster in terms of depth. Sure, you have Ji-Hwan Bae, but it seems they may be moving him to the outfield.

Besides Bae, the Pirates are left with Liover Peguero regarding true middle infielders on the 40-man. Sure, you have Jared Triolo, who can play shortstop, but for this article’s purpose, let’s stick with Peguero.

Today’s history lesson takes you back to January 27th, 2020.

The Pirates acquired Peguero from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for Starling Marte. Looking back on things, the Pirates may have been swindled, but that’s for another article on a different day.

The 21-year-old Dominican native began his Pirates career in 2021 with the Greensboro Grasshoppers, and the jury still seemed out on how to feel about the youngster.

Although he found himself in a hitters’ haven in Greensboro, Peguero didn’t overwhelm you with his offensive ability. Peguero finished the ’21 season with a slash line of .270/.332/.444 with an OPS of .776.

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Peguero struck out more often than not, with 105 strikeouts in 374 at-bats or a 25.2% K rate. His wRC+ was barely above average at 108, and he carried an “average” BB% at 7.9%.

Pirates’ fans still held onto some hope for Peguero as he entered the 2022 season with Double-A Altoona with a bang. Peguero started the month of April with a .324/.360/.577 slash line, with over half of his hits going for extra bases (nine doubles and three home runs) and 16 RBIs.

Peguero maintained his hot streak heading into May with a .303/.327/.465 slash line, 14 RBIs, and ten extra-base hits. You could tell that things were declining despite the production staying around the same.

Some more concerning stats were the increase in strikeouts, with 25 in May as opposed to just 12 in April. Peguero’s OPS dropped from .937 to .792, and his defensive issues started to pop up more and more.

The months just got worse, with a .231 average in June, .192 in July, .236 in August, and then a little increase to .273 in September.

From the looks of Peguero, it would seem that he can serve as a valuable bench player or “role player,” if you will, but his ceiling doesn’t look very high regardless of where they throw him in the field.

Peguero offers a right-handed bat for the Pirates, which is valuable, but even looking at his splits against lefties, he wasn’t even that good with a .236/.258/.360 line.

So answering the question the headline poses, Peguero can be a valuable option to the Pittsburgh Pirates, just not an extremely valuable one from the looks of things.

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