The Crane Pool Forum

DJ Stewart has signed a minor league deal with the Pirates. Had a couple of “The DJ Stewart Game” games when all hope was otherwise lost the second half of 2023. Made himself dispensable as 2024 evolved. Tough guy to not like, however he was batting.

Always engaged in the game when he was on the bench, and frequently had a fun mess o' curls sticking to his face when his hat came off.

When he was on, he had a Nimmo-like eye in the batter's box, ignoring pitches that were just missing, and squaring up anything over the plate. If the pitcher gave in and threw a get-me-over pitch, he punished it.

When he was off, he forgot what the bat was for, guessing everything wrong and watching fat pitches down the middle for strike three.

Destined to get conflated with Daniel Vogelbach in my mind in future seasons, but Vogelbach had a Chris Farley flop o' bangs falling in his face when his hat came off. I'm pretty sure DJ and his curls are biracial and Vogelbach is, um, monoracial, and maybe I can use that to distinguish them going forward, but I won't do that out loud, because then somebody's going to ask me "You know, why does everything have to be about race in this country?" and I won't have an answer for that. Or actually I will have a perfectly good and valid answer for that, but it will be a long and annoying answer and so I look bad either way.

DJ!!

Not quite as obnoxiously tubby as Vogelbach, but still hard to look at.

He always seemed long on effort and he had his share of Met moment

He can be the Ji Man Choi of the Pirates

Turned out to be a pretty savvy get for a minor-league veteran. I on more than 1 occasion was moved to remark/write/tweet/blog "Goddamn that DJ made my day."