Blue Jays accept Gift from Pirates
You don’t acquire a player because he has an interesting backstory.
But Gift Ngoepe’s past, and the way he grew up and came to play baseball, is an incredible one.
Ngoepe — whom Toronto Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins acquired from the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday for cash considerations and a player to be named later — grew up in a baseball clubhouse. Not just on weekends or evenings. Ngoepe and his brother lived with their mother Maureen inside the clubhouse of the Randburg Mets baseball club, outside of Johannesburg, South Africa — where his mom worked as the clubhouse attendant, cook, and cleaner.
Ngoepe learned to play the game and in 2008 became the first black South African to sign a Major League contract, with the Pirates.
His ascension in the Pittsburgh minor league system has been less than meteoric, but this past year the 27-year-old middle infielder was finally called up to the Pirates on April 26 from Triple A Indianapolis. The 5-8, 200-pound Ngoepe is a decent hitter with some pop in his bat, but it is his defence that intrigued the Jays. Atkins sees Ngoepe as someone who can fill in at shortstop or second base, though it seems the Jays will continue to search for an everyday major league infielder to play a regular role in case Troy Tulowitzki and/ or Devon Travis go down with injuries in 2018. Ngoepe would be more of a Triple A call-up, as he has options.
Ngoepe played 28 games for the Pirates last season, hitting .222 and scoring 10 runs. The word on Ngoepe, even though he’s 27, is he is still developing as a player and is still learning the game in many respects.
As for any other moves, Atkins is working on, the Jays GM couldn’t say if any deals are close to being done or almost ready to get acted upon.
“Nothing new,” Atkins said. “But we continue to have discussions (with teams and agents) and feel better about opportunities to make our team better. We do have a little bit more clarity each day, but there’s nothing imminent.”