Q&A and Duke

Dejan's weekly Q&A is up today, and as usual he takes on a wide range of topics. He names Santos and Snell as having the inside track to take the last two rotation spots, and that seems pretty likely to me at this point. He again praises the emphasis Tracy has put on plate patience, and I'll admit that to this point in the spring it does seem that there's been some progress made. He also mentions that starting Monday he'll be off the beat for 15 days with Paul Meyer filling in. That means we can probably expect 15 days of DL and Jim Tracy puff pieces.

Also today we get a Pirates notebook focusing on Zach Duke's early spring struggles. It doesn't seem like too much to worry about it, he just seems to be having trouble spotting his two seamer, which is his out pitch. I saw him talking about it earlier and he didn't seem too concerned, he just said it's mostly a finesse thing that he expects to get better with time. Also in the notebook, Dejan reveals the limited no-trade clause included in Jack's contract. It's not really a big deal, it just means that Jack gets to pick six teams he can't be traded to before every season. It's pretty likely that the teams Jack would want to avoid couldn't afford him anymore anyways.