Waiver info, for anyone that's interested
Peter Gammons has an (Insider only, sorry) article about the mass confusion caused by the waiver wire right up at ESPN right now. It's mostly about teams that the ESPN.com reading audience cares about and it only mentions three Pirates. I'm sure Littlefield attempted to put more than three players through waivers since most GMs put a large portion of their roster on the wire to keep as many doors open as possible, but here's the three Gammo mentions.
- Rob Mackowiak was put on waivers and pulled back by the Bucs. This is kind of surprising because I thought we'd been trying to deal him more or less all year, though I suppose the claim to him may have just been a block to keep a contender from getting a decent left-handed bat for their bench.
- Ryan Vogelsong cleared waivers. I can't imagine any contender will want him for their pen, and I'm not ready for us to give up on him yet. I'm fairly sure this is meaningless and can't imagine why Gammons thought this to be worthy of mentioning.
- Josh Fogg cleared waivers. This is the most meaningful of the three Pirates mentioned because Fogg could be of some potential use to a contending team (or a psuedo-contender like the Yankees) with starting pitching woes. He's more than adequate at keeping his team in the game and he has a winning record with four awful teams in Pittsburgh. It's been hinted again and again that Littlefield doesn't think he's talented enough to be a Major League starter and we have a ton of pitching in the minors, some of which will be ready in a short amount of time. Fogg is the most oft mentioned name to be dropped from the rotation. All of this means that it's possible that Josh Fogg won't be a Pirate come September 1st. Of course this is all just speculation. After all, the biggest name at the July 31st deadline in all of baseball was Matt Lawton, and I'm not sure many people would have forecasted that on July 16th.
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