That doesn’t just mean having a look at young call-ups this

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The Pittsburgh Pirates , like other teams realistically out of contention for a playoff spot, are looking to the future. .There is a burgeoning competition in the rotation, one that isn’t much more than a mythical designation at this point, but one that has been illustrated by two eye-popping stretches.Right-hander Jameson Taillon, who is scheduled to face the Cincinnati Reds Wednesday in the finale of a three-game series at PNC Park, has made 17 straight starts allowing three runs or fewer, dating to May 27.Article continues below ...Taillon (11-9, 3.45 ERA) has competition for Pirates staff ace from right-hander Trevor Williams, who has a 0.66 ERA in his past nine starts, including 6 2/3 scoreless innings Monday in a 5-1 win in the series opener.There has been no public sparring between Taillon and Williams over who is No. 1. Taillon, who has completed six innings in seven consecutive starts, just seems grateful for his growth as a major league starter. He will be making his 28th start Wednesday with 159 innings under his belt.“You can learn from your success just as easily as you can from your failure. I seem to take something away from every start , every bullpen — there’s always something,” he said Friday after he struck out seven in seven innings in a 3-2 win over Atlanta.“It feels good to be taking the ball. It feels good to look up there and see my inning count up there. You see it on the scoreboard. It’s something to be proud of, taking the ball and pitching deep into games. That’s something that I want to be known for. I don’t know if I’ve been known for that in my career the way that I want to be. So, going forward, that’s a point of focus.”Taillon is 3-3 with a 4.50 ERA in 10 career starts against the Reds.The Pirates (68-71) will be going for a series sweep Wednesday and are 11-4 this year against Cincinnati (59-81), which has lost five of seven overall.Going against Taillon, 26, Wednesday will be right-hander Homer Bailey (1-13, 6.13 ERA), a grizzled veteran by comparison.Bailey, 32, enters the game three strikeouts shy of 1 ,000 in his career, with 1,225 1/3 innings under his belt.The Reds’ struggles have affected his record. Cincinnati is 1-18 in Bailey’s 19 starts.He is 0-6 in with a 5.26 ERA in seven starts since coming off the disabled list because of right knee inflammation. However, he has 33 strikeouts and eight walks in 39 1/3 innings in those seven outings.In a 12-5 loss to St. Louis Friday, Bailey gave up seven runs in five innings, but only three runs were earned.“He’s getting closer and closer to being what he can be, but as he goes through it, he’s not getting away with anything,” Reds manager Jim Riggleman said of Bailey. “Hitters are all over his stuff, and he’s pitching into some bad luck.”Against Pittsburgh, Bailey is 10-7 with a 3.68 ERA in 23 career starts. FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Minnesota Twins third baseman Miguel Sano will likely miss the first month of the regular season , following another procedure to repair a severe cut above the heel on his right foot.Sano was sent to a plastic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he underwent an operation called a debridement that removes damaged tissue or foreign objects from a wound, Twins chief baseball officer Derek Falvey said Tuesday.The gash Sano suffered Jan. 26 in his native Dominican Republic when he slipped on some metal stairs on a stage during his team’s winter league championship celebration was not healing as expected, so the Twins sought a more aggressive treatment for their 25-year-old slugger whose major league career has been marked more by nagging injuries than home runs.Falvey said Sano could resume baseball activity in about three weeks, with the goal of starting a minor league rehabilitation assignment in mid-April and joining the Twins in May.Fortunately for the Twins, they’ve got one of the most versatile players in the game to fill in after signing former Houston Astros handyman Marwin Gonzalez to a two-year, $21 million contract last month . The plan was to essentially make Gonzalez an everyday multi-positional player, but for now he’ll probably take the majority of the turns at third base.For Twins, though, the news was another setback after a career-worst 2018 season for Sano during which he batted .199 with a .679 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 71 games while spending months in the minor leagues for reconditioning.Though he came with stitches behind his Achilles tendon, Sano reported to camp noticeably slimmer after a more rigorous winter workout routine with designs on putting together the complete season the Twins have been waiting for since Sano made the All-Star game in 2017.

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