BRADENTON, Fla. — With his lean, 6-foot-4 frame and full red beard, Colin Moran looks like a viking. When he speaks, though, you have to lean in to hear the soft-spoken third baseman.
If all goes according to plan for the Pirates, Moran will follow Theodore Roosevelt’s directive: to speak softly and carry a big stick.
Moran, 25, was the centerpiece of the Gerrit Cole trade with the Houston Astros, and favorable perception of that deal (if such a thing is possible) likely will rest with Moran. Not that he seems to be moved by the pressure.
“Getting traded over to the Astros last time, I kind of learned how to deal with it all,” Moran said at Pirate City on Tuesday. “Obviously, it was a different situation. But I think learning from that situation will help going into this one. But no pressure to do anything else. I was traded for who I was, so I'm just going to keep trying to be the same guy.”
Moran, though, hasn’t been the same guy throughout his career. A couple of offseasons ago, he underwent a major change to his swing — simplifying his approach and using a more powerful launch angle — by training with Jeff Albert, then the Astros’ hitting coordinator and now an assistant hitting coach. Albert lives in Jupiter, Fla., near Moran’s home in Palm Beach Gardens, and trained with him every weekday.
The changes between his major-league debut in 2016 and his return to the big-league roster last year were significant. In nine games with the Astros in 2016, he hit .130 with a measly .374 OPS, compared with .364 and 1.235 in seven games last season. Sure, the sample size is small, but Moran’s numbers in every offensive metric, from hard contact to strikeout rate, had improved. Last week he was listed at No. 53 on FanGraphs’ top 100 prospects rankings.
Moran’s 2017 campaign was derailed by a freak foul ball that left him with a facial fracture and a concussion. He said he has no lingering issues from the injury and surgery after working with Astros head athletic trainer Jeremiah Randall, who spent three seasons with the Pirates.
After finishing 28th in OPS and 29th in home runs last season, the Pirates could certainly use the glimmers of pop that Moran showed in the big leagues in 2017. Moran, whose defense has been questioned, likely will form a third-base platoon with David Freese, potentially creating a tradeoff between Moran’s bat and Freese’s glove.
Moran was drafted by the Miami Marlins with the sixth overall pick of the 2013 draft out of the University of North Carolina. Freshman year, he roomed on road trips with Jacob Stallings, who is now his teammate in the Pirates organization. His baseball bloodline includes his brother, Brian, a pitcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, and uncles B.J. and Rick Surhoff.
He was traded to the Astros in 2014 before being bundled with Joe Musgrove, Michael Feliz and Jason Martin and dealt to the Pirates this winter. Moran got the call about the trade as he was getting off a plane in New York to attend his niece’s baptism.
“I was just really excited,” Moran said. “Obviously, it’s kind of bittersweet because you’re leaving a bunch of people that you got to know really well and had a lot of connections over there, but at the end of the day I was pumped up at the opportunity to get over here.”
So which Moran will the Pirates get on the field this season — the quiet 2016? The viking-like 2017?
“I don't look too far into the future or anything, like where I hit or what I hit,” Moran said. “Just trying to kind of put my work in and just work as hard as you can and see what happens.”
Elizabeth Bloom: ebloom@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1750 and Twitter: @BloomPG.
First Published: February 13, 2018, 5:30 p.m.