'Good to get back': Oneil Cruz shows lateral movement in 1st game with Pirates since injury

BRADENTON, Fla. — If the Pittsburgh Pirates were worried about Oneil Cruz’s lateral movement after missing almost all of last season with a fractured left ankle, they didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The first contact of his first spring training game provided an answer. It marked the first time Cruz played in a Pirates uniform since April 9, when he suffered the season-ending injury while sliding into home plate.

In the top of the first inning Sunday, Cruz scooped a sharp grounder by Ryan Mountcastle to his left, stepped on second base and threw to Rowdy Tellez at first to turn a double play against the Baltimore Orioles in the Pirates’ Grapefruit League home opener at LECOM Park.

“It was good to get back out there, especially being out for so long,” Cruz said Monday morning through an interpreter, Pirates coach Stephen Morales. “It’s always something in your mind when you start moving laterally when you go through an injury or something like that. It felt kind of weird at first, but with the adrenaline on the play, it felt natural and it felt good at the end.”

To see Cruz make the routine play appear effortless was an “encouraging” sign to Pirates manager Derek Shelton that the 25-year-old shortstop is gaining trust in his ankle. The Pirates are keeping close watch on his movements in spring training in hopes that he will be ready to return to being an everyday player at his position.

“I’m looking forward to him doing everything,” Shelton said. “So, any day we have him on the field — or every day we have him on the field — is a good day. It’s just going to be game, situational stuff, whether it’s sliding, whether it’s hitting, whether it’s going to his right, left, seeing the arm. It’s just going to be getting the reps.”

Cruz worked to fill out his 6-foot-7 frame this spring and claims to have packed “9 pounds of pure muscle and 4 pounds of good weight,” which hasn’t appeared to affect his quickness.

“He looks bigger, but Oneil’s also 6-7 and was thin. He’s growing into his body also,” Shelton said. “But the fact that I think that he was diligent about how he worked and what he wanted to do was really important, and it’s good weight. We saw him move yesterday for the first time to his left. As long as it doesn’t affect his mobility, which is something that we will monitor and keep track of, we’re going to be in a good spot with him. We just need to get him on the field.”

In his first at-bat Sunday, Cruz worked a seven-pitch at-bat before grounding out to second. In his second at-bat, he took a called first strike before crushing Bryan Baker’s 90-mph slider to foul territory, where it landed atop the building that houses the Pirates’ clubhouse. Cruz then was called for a pitch-clock violation, taking an automatic third strike.

“That first at-bat was a good one because I was able to see a lot of pitches, a few sliders and some balls in the dirt,” Cruz said. “Took a few pitches that were good takes, too. The second one, you guys know what happened. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was what it was.”

The Pirates want to take advantage of Cruz’s prodigious power at the leadoff spot, given how he can provide protection with his combination of power at the plate and speed on the basepaths.

“Whenever those guys are up at the bottom of the lineup, he’s there so they can’t really pitch around them in a sense,” third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes said. “If you pitch around and got too many guys on, he’s going to hit a three-run homer. That also helps guys that hit behind him because he also can run, can steal first and second. Having him up there at the top, we saw last year what he can do. … We’re super thrilled to have him back.”