{"id":98394,"date":"2025-03-28T19:43:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T23:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=98394"},"modified":"2025-03-28T19:43:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T23:43:46","slug":"pirates-nick-gonzales-injured-list-ankle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/28\/pirates-nick-gonzales-injured-list-ankle\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Place Former No. 1 Draft Pick Gonzales on Injured List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Pirates have placed second baseman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gonzani01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nick Gonzales<\/a> on the injured list with a \u201cnondisplaced fracture of the left ankle.\u201d He incurred the injury on Opening Day while trotting to first base after hitting a home run against the Miami Marlins. Infielder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/valdeen01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Enmanuel Vald\u00e9z<\/a> was recalled from Triple-A Indianapolis to take his place on the roster.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">We have recalled INF\/OF Enmanuel Valdez from Triple-A Indianapolis and placed INF Nick Gonzales on the 10-day injured list.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Pirates\/status\/1905731419307217008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 28, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Pirates Place Nick Gonzales on Injured List, Call Up Vald\u00e9z<\/h2>\n<p>Gonzales, the Pirates&#8217; first-round draft pick in 2020, was expected to take some forward steps this year after hitting .270\/.311\/.398, 7 HR, and 49 RBI after <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/05\/09\/pirates-call-up-gonzales\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">last year\u2019s call-up<\/a>. His home run was among the few bright spots for Pittsburgh in their disastrous 5-4 Opening Day loss. He was removed from the game in favor of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/fraziad01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adam Frazier<\/a>. The Pirates initially announced that Gonzales was day-to-day. Clearly, the injury turned out to be worse than thought upon further examination. At this is written, there\u2019s no timetable for his return.<\/p>\n<p>Vald\u00e9z is a left-handed hitting infielder who the Pirates acquired from the Boston Red Sox in the offseason. His primary position is second base. In 125 major league games over 2023 and 2024, he hit .235\/.286\/.400, 12 HR, and 47 RBI. Pirates fans might have preferred to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/y\/yorkeni01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nick Yorke<\/a>, also an infielder and their favorite team\u2019s No. 5 prospect. Neither Yorke nor Vald\u00e9z had impressive springs, however. The Pirates likely want Yorke to keep working at Indianapolis while preserving one of his minor league options.<\/p>\n<p>The left-handed hitting Frazier was in Friday\u2019s starting lineup in Gonzales\u2019 place. Manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/managers\/sheltde99.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Derek Shelton<\/a> will probably platoon Frazier with right-handed hitting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/triolja01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jared Triolo<\/a>. Triolo was expected to see action at first base with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/horwisp01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spencer Horwitz<\/a> out. Now it seems switch-hitting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rodrien01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Endy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a> will see the bulk of the action at the first base bag. How Vald\u00e9z fits remains to be seen. Shelton doesn\u2019t leave players on the bench to rot, and with Vald\u00e9z having a better power bat from the left side than Frazier, he may be hard to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Pirates have placed second baseman Nick Gonzales on the injured list with a \u201cnondisplaced fracture of the left ankle.\u201d He incurred the injury on Opening Day while trotting to first base after hitting a home run against the Miami Marlins. Infielder Enmanuel Vald\u00e9z was recalled from Triple-A Indianapolis to take his place on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5010,"featured_media":98404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1071,35],"tags":[1103,3160,6314,6463,3605,28666,28345],"class_list":["post-98394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pirates","category-mlb","category-news","tag-adam-frazier","tag-derek-shelton","tag-enmanuel-valdez","tag-jared-triolo","tag-nick-gonzales","tag-nick-yorke","tag-spencer-horwitz"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98394"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98405,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98394\/revisions\/98405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}