The Pittsburgh Pirates won't have to go too far to access their "taxi squad" of players for the 2020 MLB season.
In a press release on Thursday, the Pirates announced that they would utilize Peoples Natural Gas Field in Altoona as an alternate training site for the upcoming season.
With Spring Training 2.0 getting underway on July 1 and live games on July 23, the Pirates will complete the training at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. However, the alternate training site will serve a very important purpose.
While the rosters will expand for this atypical season, each team will be allowed to carry an additional "taxi squad" of players as replacements for players who are injured or test positive for the coronavirus.
With both of these things being almost a foregone conclusion, the Pirates looked no further than their AA affiliate for help. In the stadium, players on the "taxi squad" will stay in shape and train in case of their impending addition to the roster.
The stadium, home to the Altoona Curve, likely would have sat empty all season, as the Minor League Baseball season is all but officially cancelled.
Peoples Natural Gas Field, which opened in 1999 as Blair County Ballpark, has been the home of the Altoona Curve since their inception that same year. The Curve have served as the Pirates' AA affiliate since their founding.
In 2013, the Pirates played an exhibition game against the Curve in Altoona prior to the beginning of the regular season. The game, which welcomed in a record 10,116 fans (capacity of 7,210), saw the Curve defeat the Pirates, 8-6.
Peoples Natural Gas Field is the second-closest affiliated stadium to Pittsburgh, sitting approximately 100 miles from PNC Park. Monongalia County Ballpark in Granville, West Virginia, home of the West Virginia Black Bears (short-season), is about 70 miles from PNC Park.
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