A Look At Chase d'Arnaud

First things first: It is pronounced "Dar-no" with the stress on the second syllable.

Chase d'Arnaud has been called up to the big leagues for the first time in his career. He was drafted by the Pirates in the 4th round of the 2008 draft and did not disappoint in the early years of his minor league career.

In his first year with State College, he hit .286/.333/.423 in 43 games, getting off on the right foot. He was promoted the next year and has progressed through the system performing well at every level. Here are his career minor league numbers:

Year	Tm	Lev	Aff	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2008	State College	A-	PIT	43	183	168	26	48	10	5	1	21	11	30	.286	.333	.423	.756
2009	2 Teams	A-A+	PIT	116	508	423	77	124	33	7	7	57	60	72	.293	.398	.454	.852
2009	West Virginia	A	PIT	62	255	213	32	62	14	3	3	31	30	31	.291	.394	.427	.821
2009	Lynchburg	A+	PIT	54	253	210	45	62	19	4	4	26	30	41	.295	.402	.481	.883
2010	Altoona	AA	PIT	132	607	530	91	131	33	9	6	48	56	102	.247	.331	.377	.708
2011	Indianapolis	AAA	PIT	62	269	239	39	67	11	5	4	33	20	42	.280	.347	.418	.766
4 Seasons				353	1567	1360	233	370	87	26	18	159	147	246	.272	.356	.414	.770

2010 wasn't a great year for d'Arnaud, hitting .247/.331/.377 in 132 games at the AA level. This was especially hard to see for Pirates fans because of the big year he had in 2009. Chase is basically the only serious shortstop prospect the Pirates have in their system, so he has had a lot of eyes on him during his career. Now we will get to see what this kid has at the big league level, as he will be up for the Red Sox series.

From what we have seen in the minors, it appears that d'Arnaud has the ability to play good defense in the major leagues. That's never a sure thing though, and with Ronny Cedeno showing a good glove this year the Pirates will be hesitant to make him the every day shortstop. It will certainly be interesting to see what the Pirates do with him once they start playing games with him on the 25-man roster and if they keep him around for long.

At this point he is certainly a better option than Pedro Ciriaco, but it might not be in the team's best interest to take his every day playing time away in favor a bench spot in the bigs, so I would expect to see him starting a good amount of games.

The call up of Chase d'Arnaud was probably one of the biggest things we were looking for this year, because it means a lot to the future of the Pirates. After last year's call-ups of Jose Tabata, Pedro Alvarez, and Neil Walker, the farm system looked quite unimpressive. d'Arnaud is one of the few guys in the upper levels of the minors that have a good chance at being good big league players, and with the system especially thin at shortstop, d'Arnaud has a lot of pressure on him to perform well. Should be interesting to see.