Jack Suwinski

Jack William Suwinski

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 6' 2", Weight 215 lb.
• High School William Howard Taft High School (Chicago)
• Debut April 26, 2022

• Born July 29, 1998 in Chicago, IL USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Outfielder Jack Suwinski made his major league debut in 2022.

He swam in addition to playing baseball in high school. He was a 15th-round pick of the San Diego Padres in the 2016 amateur draft, one pick before John Schreiber. He signed for a $550,000 bonus, well over the slot value, to lure him away from a scholarship offer at Indiana University. He hit .241/.325/.287 for the AZL Padres that summer. He moved up to full-season ball in 2017, batting .227/.319/.349 with 55 walks for the Fort Wayne TinCaps.

Back with Fort Wayne the next year, he improved to .255/.324/.408 with 7 triples, fielding .990 in the outfield with ten assists. He tied Luis Urias and Buddy Reed for 4th in the Padres chain in three-baggers. In 2019, he hit .208/.303/.351 for the Lake Elsinore Storm. The 2020 minor league season was wiped out by COVID-19. He began 2021 with the San Antonio Missions and was at .269/.399/.551 with 15 homers and 47 runs in 66 games, showing much progress.

He was one of three players obtained by the Pittsburgh Pirates at the trading deadline in 2021 from the San Diego Padres in return for All-Star 2B Adam Frazier. The others were Tucupita Marcano and Michell Miliano. He hit .252/.359/.391 in 45 games for the Altoona Curve to finish the season with 19 homers and 70 walks at AA. He began 2022 back with Altoona and was hitting well - .353/.421/.686, 13 R, 13 RBI in 13 G.

Suwinski got the call to The Show when Bryan Reynolds went on to the COVID-19 list. He made his major league debut for the Pirates on April 26, 2022, starting in right field and batting 8th against the Milwaukee Brewers. He grounded out against Brandon Woodruff his first time up. His fourth trip to the plate, facing Jose Urena, he reached on an error by Kolten Wong and scored on a grounder by Daniel Vogelbach. He singled off Urena in the 9th, having gone 1 for 5 in his team's 12-8 loss. He was one of two Bucs to make their MLB debut that day, alongside pitcher Beau Sulser. He was given plenty of playing time after that, and on June 19th he had a career game in a 4-3 win over the San Francisco Giants. That day, he became the first Pirates rookie to have a three-homer game since Andrew McCutchen had done so in 2009, and the third of his long balls was a walk-off homer against Tyler Rogers to lead off the bottom of the 9th. That gave him 11 homers in 47 games - and it wasn't even his first walk-off blast, as he already had such a thrilling hit on June 4th, when he connected off Mark Melancon of the Arizona Diamondbacks to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 win, also in the bottom of the 9th. On June 29th, he scored a run under very unusual circumstances in an 8-7 win over the Washington Nationals, when the Nats failed to properly execute the obscure fourth out rule. He was on third base and Hoy Park on second with one out in the 5th when Ke'Bryan Hayes lined out to 1B Josh Bell. Both runners were going on the hit, and Bell relayed the ball to 3B Ehire Adrianza, who tagged Park, apparently ending the inning. However, Jack had already crossed home plate by then, and while Adrianza stepped on third base, he failed to properly inform the umpires that he was appealing Jack leaving the bag early, so the run was allowed to stand, putting Pittsburgh ahead, 4-3. Bryan Reynolds hit three homers in that game, and the very next day it was C Michael Perez who accomplished the feat, making the Pirates the first team to have three such games in a month. In fact, the record for an entire season was four. He was the second Pirates rookie to have two walk-off homers in a year - Wally Westlake had done it in 1947. After an 0-for-28 slump in July, he was sent back to the minors. At the time, he was leading NL rookies with 14 homers but had fallen under the Mendoza Line. He returned to the Bucs six weeks later, at the end of August and played regularly in September, to finish at .202 in 106 games with 19 homers and 38 RBIs. His OPS+ was 99 in spite of the low batting average.

On May 26, 2023, he had what was already the third multi-homer game of his career when the Pirates tied a team record by hitting seven long balls in an 11-6 win over the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park. Five teammates also went deep, to match a feat accomplished three other times by the team - in 1894, 1947 and 2003. The feat gave him 9 homers in 42 games at that point. On May 29th, he had another two-homer game, this one at Oracle Park in San Francisco, CA; both of them were of the splash-down variety, landing in McCovey Cove, making him only the second player ever, after Barry Bonds, to achieve the feat twice in the same game. His victims were Anthony DeSclafani and position player Brett Wisely pitching the final inning of a 14-4 win by the San Francisco Giants.

Notable Achievements

• 20-Home Run Seasons: 1 (2023)

Further Reading

• Scott Chiusano: "Only Bonds had ever hit two splash homers in one game. Until now", mlb.com, May 29, 2023. [1]
• Justice delos Santos: "With dad watching, Suwinski's 3rd HR of the game walks it off", mlb.com, June 19, 2022. [2]
• Justice delos Santos and Jessica Camerato: "Bucs score because Nats didn't get ... a fourth out?", mlb.com, June 29, 2022. [3]

Related Sites

• Jack Suwinski on mlb.com