The Pirates have demoted the frustrating outfielder Jose Tabata to Indianapolis and promoted fellow outfielder Gorkys Hernandez to take his place, leaving highly-rated prospect Starling Marte in the minors.
Tabata has annoyed the Pirates and their fans all year with poor results and questionable effort, often appearing to run hard on certain plays while jogging on others. Tabata is hitting .230/.295/.341 this season. The move to Indianapolis will hopefully prove to be a wake-up call for a once-promising young player whose career should be developing more quickly than it is.
Hernandez can't hit at all, and is mostly just a defensive sub, so this move does little to address the Pirates' real problems at the corner outfield spots. We'll have to wait on either the promotion of Marte or a trade for that. In the meantime, it's likely that we'll continue to see Drew Sutton starting in the outfield.
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