Kevin Gorman

They're not landing their fastballs wherever they want them.

You know, it's a little more of a scattershot.

But, you know, when he was in AA, he looked like a man amongst boys.

And he was four and a half years younger than everybody, you know, in terms of average age.

He's going to look that play.

He already looks the part of being an opening day shortstop.

I think the Pirates may have some reservations about putting him.

They very much talked about putting this guy in a position to succeed instead of one to fail because they know how valuable he is and how important his development is for their future.

I think what's realistic is you're going to see performances like yesterday.

And yesterday was, you know, a little bit of an abnormally that yesterday

that he's a guy who's going to walk people sometimes because he throws the ball really hard, and the command isn't quite where it needs to be.

I think you're going to see, because of the predecessors to him, Jared Jones and Paul Skeens, you're going to expect him to come up and throw 100 miles an hour and blow people away, which he's shown he can do.

We've also seen him have a rough outing against Milwaukee.

We've also seen him do it in small spurts when he was working out of the bullpen to start his career.

But, you know, the thing that impressed everybody about Bubba Chandler yesterday, it's not so much that he hit 100 miles an hour on his third pitch.

We know he's capable of that.

For him to do it in late February as opposed to, say, late March or early April, it's impressive to tell you that the ball was coming out of his hand very good, that he felt good out there, that he was feeling it, that he actually said he regrets dialing it back.

The thing that Joey Bart was impressed with, that Don Kelly was impressed with, and that Chandler was pleased with,

is that he got strikeouts with his changeup in his slider.

And so that he's got his, you know, secondary pitches working as well as he does this early in spring training is a good sign.