Third-baseman Colin Moran
In January, Colin Moran joined the Pirates as part of a trade with the Houston Astros, so we thought we would do a little digging to get you up to speed!
Colin was born 10/1/92 in Port Chester, NY, and now lives in Celebration, FL (Only 1.5 hours away from Bradenton!). His family holds a rich history of Major League Baseball — Colin is the nephew of B.J. Surhoff, a 18-year Major League veteran and former №1 overall draft pick and Colin’s older brother, Brian, is a left-handed pitcher in the Texas Rangers organization. Some pretty cool company in the Moran family!
The left-handed hitting Moran hit .364 (4-for-11) with a triple, home run and three RBI in seven games for the Astros this past season while also hitting .308 (93-for-302) with 15 doubles, one triple, 18 home runs and 63 RBI in 79 games with Triple-A Fresno. The 25-year-old was originally selected sixth overall in the 2013 Draft by Miami before being acquired by Houston on July 31, 2014. Prior to the 2014 campaign, Moran was rated as one of baseball’s top 100 prospects by multiple media outlets, including MLB.com (#51) and Baseball America (#61).
He hit 18 dingers last year at AAA and one in his brief stint in the bigs.
Here’s Moran mashing (because we like home run vids):
How nice will THAT power look over towering over the Clemente Wall?! We know a guy that’s pretty excited about it:
“Colin Moran joins the Pirates and projects to be a quality left-handed hitting third baseman with developing power,” said Huntington. “Colin is an intelligent, hard-working player who made an adjustment to his swing and approach last season. His adjustments led to increased power production that should play very well at the Major League level, especially at PNC Park.”
— Pirates GM Neal Huntington
In 2017, Moran fouled a ball off his face in a game vs the Orioles and was placed on the 10-day disabled list, explaining his limited time on the big league squad. He returned to the field in September 2017 and now that he’s ready to go, we’re looking forward to seeing his power at PNC in 2018. 💪
Give Colin a friendly welcome to the Bucs over on Twitter!
