Monday

I didn't post yesterday, mostly because I spent about 10 hours from noon on watching the Steelers, then basking in the glow of their amazing win. At this point it's hard for even me to think about baseball.

Still, Dejan gets paid to do it, and on Sunday the Hot Stove Report had a nice write-up about Josh Sharpless, who used a huge season last year to sneak on to the 40-man this season and is probably one of the better relief prospects we have. The same article says that signs are pointing to Sean Burnett's comeback going smoothely. We can only hope.

There's also two more Minicamp reports, one on Tracyball (yaaaawn) and one on the bullpen which is looking quite good this year. Of course having guys like Gonzalez, Torres, probably Hernandez, maybe Marte (if he isn't dealt) is a good reason to have confidence in your pen, but the best reason to is the absence of Jose Mesa.

Charlie also has a post on Zach Duke's views on Lloyd McClendon. As he points out, this puts Kip's comments from the other day in a different light. It's interesting that all this stuff is coming out now and I'm not going to beat a dead horse (you all know that I didn't like McClendon) but this is the kind of stuff I kind of suspected of going on behind the scenes that no one ever talked about. It's the stuff like watching an "Inside Pirates Baseball" in June and hearing Matt Lawton tell you that he hasn't actually spoken to McClendon once yet (I know I know, Matt Lawton, but that really happened and stuff like that is ridiculous) that makes this not so surprising.

Anyways, I'll try and shift my mind back into baseball gear and maybe I'll eventually be able to put a post up that's more than a bunch of links, but it might take a while.