Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

This has been pointed out to me at least twice in the comments and I was going to put it the links post yesterday, but this deserves it's own post. In this week's mailbag Ed Eagle, aka Dave Littlefield in disguise, aka The Minister of Truth , aka The Mouth , is leaving Pirates.com for an editorial position with MLB.com that will strangely take him to Toronto. I, for one, will miss his daily doses of propaganda and the way he would slowly ease his readers into stupid things the management was considering (like the way he hinted for months last winter that Humberto Cota and Ryan Doumit were going to split time behind the plate last year). I don't know what we'll do without you, Ed.

Jeff Sackmann has a Pirates preview up at Beyond the Boxscore. It's worth it to read it all, but to boil it down: What's too bad is that so much young talent--Bay, Duke, Sanchez, and others--is going wasted on what will probably be a 70-win team until they hit free agency. Webmaster Cory has moved the Roundtable to MVN after some MLBlogs trouble so change your bookmarks. Round 10's questions are posted and the first of them intersects with the long post below. Commenter and fellow Duke Eric has started up a sports satire site call The Personal Foul , so check it out when you get the chance. Here 's UniWatch's take on the Heinz Ketchup 57th alternate uniforms. MLB links: Bonds' contract with the Giants is finalized and if he's healthy it's worth a ton of money but if he's indicted the team can release him , the Rockies say the Helton deal is off which means it should be finalized by Friday, Curt Schilling says he'll be pitching in 2008 rathe...

Chris Duffy must be a consistent offensive contributor for the Pirates to win. This is the first part of a running season preview in which I look at things that I think have to happen in order for the Pirates to be a decent baseball team in 2007 and decide how likely I think they are to happen. Before I get into whether or not Chris Duffy can be a consistent offensive contributor, I think it's important to talk about why the Pirates need him to be one. Simply put, they need to put people on base in front of Adam LaRoche and Jason Bay. Freddy Sanchez will likely do his share, though Jack Wilson likely will not. Duffy is the wild card. He's also the only real speed threat on the team, which isn't a huge deal but it's at least something to think about. People like to compare Duffy to Tike Redman a lot because they seem to be players of a similar make and they both had scintillating quarter seasons that excited the hell out of Pirate fans at similar ages (25 for Duff and 2...

I think it's about time to stop complaining about red uniforms and everything Jack Wilson says and kick into some serious baseball talk. Specifically it's time to start thinking about 2007. Last year I did a post for each player and did predictions, but those turned out poorly, were mostly just guesses, and aren't nearly as good or fun as Charlie's community projections. Accordingly, I'm going to try something different this year. Accordingly, I'm going to do something different this year. I probably will preview the individual players at some point, likely much closer to the season. Until then, I'm going to look at what needs to happen for the Pirates to be good in 2007. It's not very likely that they'll be good, but it does seem to be at least a little more plausible this year than in the past. I'm going to try and look at all of the puzzle pieces that need to fall into place and just how likely those pieces are to end up where they need to be...

Don't worry guys, the red uniforms haven't sent me into a murderous rage. I'm still here and still writing. I know I haven't posted in two days, but I'm going to kick into a rather extensive season preview starting later this afternoon, as soon as I finish up some work that I have due in a little bit.

I'm honestly having a hard time getting excited about Piratefest this year. I'm not even planning on going down to the convention center to see it, and it's mostly out of apathy for the team. I think the overwhelming optimism from Jim Tracy and the talking heads on TVs has actually pushed me further in the opposite direction. Anyways, on to some links. Jim Tracy, Jack Wilson, Freddy Sanchez, and Jason Bay talk lineups in the PG today . It's kind of horrifying how often bunting is brought up. If Freddy Sanchez ever bunts anyone over to third base next year... I'm going to stop that thought there before I get in trouble. This notebook has Jack Wilson's quote from Savran last night where he rips into Jose Castillo. I know Jack works hard, but come on, people in glass houses... The former Buried Treasure is now the Pittsburgh Lumber Co. at the newly revamped MVN. The old link should redirect you to the new site, but you may want to update your links accordingly. C...

If you didn't catch the news tonight, you missed two amusingly awful Pirate bits. The first was Jack Wilson declaring that the lineup now has no weak spots with Adam LaRoche in it. I wonder who has to break the news to Jack that he's not just a weak spot, he's a glaring black hole in the lineup. Second is the new third or fourth or whatever uniform. Bright red vest, black lettering, black sleeves, gold trim, and bringing back the black cap with the red bill. Calling it "ugly as sin" would be offensive to sin. There's no official pics online yet, but one of Cory's mock-ups is actually dead on. I'm going to go vomit. UPDATE (7:49): The Pirates website now has a picture of the uniform up, which I've posted below. Now just picture black sleeves under that monster and... I dunno. White pants I hope. If the pants are red I'm probably done as a Pirate fan forever. I can deal with red trim like in the logo. Hell, I use red on the site. But this is ri...

According to the PG it looks like the Pirates are out of the running for Jeff Weaver and may be out of the running for Tony Armas Jr. as well. Baseball Musings passes along a link to 6-4-2 , which was at an Angels function where Jered Weaver referred to his brother as "a Mariner." Sounds like a pretty done deal to me. Meanwhile, I know you're all on the edge of your seat wondering what the red uniforms will look like. They're supposed to be unveiled around 4:30 today at the "season-ticket only" part of Piratefest, but I promise as soon as I find pictures I'll be back with some hard hitting analysis of what could be the most important move of the off-season.

Time for a new poll. Just curious what everyone thinks about next year's win total with the team as it's currently configured. As usual, feel free to discuss in the comments. Last week's results are here . It was by far the biggest poll I've ever had with almost 330 votes. Nearly 90% of those voters either graded the LaRoche trade an A or a B, which I think is probably some kind of record for a DL move. Only 18 of 329 voters gave DL a D or below for the move.

Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Pirates have shown some interest in Jeff Weaver , along with the Cardinals and Mariners (via Bucs Dugout ). Rosenthal has become kind of like a national John Perrotto in terms of rumors this off-season, but I've been saying all winter that I think Weaver makes good sense as a Bucco given his history with Tracy and Colborn . Weaver had two pretty decent years in LA with the two of them and is better than most of the rotation tripe we've been looking at this off-season. The question here comes in the price as Weaver is represented by the notorious Scott Boras . Boras has been having the best off-season of anybody, but the market seems to have dropped off recently and Weaver may not end up being as expensive as originally thought.

The Pirates have released their "Post All Star Year Blues" promotional calendar and it's packed full of stuff; Dejan has the details. There's five bobbleheads, including one for Bob Walk. How do you know you've got too many bobbleheads on the calendar? When Bob Walk gets one is probably a good answer. There's also going to be more concerts this year. Big & Rich will play a show, Styx (what, couldn't they get Foreigner?), Smashmouth, and the Poverty Neck Hillbillies will play the Sky Blastseses this year (not a me first or a gimme gimme in sight), and an as-yet-unnamed local act (who is almost certainly the Clarks, because that's how things work in Pittsburgh) will play at the end of the season.

The Cubs apparently had some fun with numbers in signing Cliff Floyd to one of the most variable deals I've seen recently. It's a slow news day when this is the most interesting thing going on.

I totally spaced on this when I put up the link list this morning, but (via Mondesi's House ) there's a picture of Trenni Kusnierek up for auction on eBay and, well, I can't think of a group of people that would appreciate this more than the readers of this blog.

See, everyone bitches and moans all off-season when people talk about DL signing guys like Trot Nixon, but when he doesn't sign him, we end up with Luis Matos. If I could use one word to Matos it would probably be "megasuck." It's gonna be a trip to watch him, Jose K, and Cota battle for the last couple roster spots. And by a trip, I mean, "I'd rather be tortured."

If you like the stuff that I link to like my Steelers preview, Geeves (of 82 ) has invited me to join him and Cory (of ANPG and various other places) at the National Sports Review. If you've never checked out the site before, well, they've already done a bunch of posting and they're doing a good job over there. Still, I do have sports opinions that are non-baseball related from time to time and I'm always loathe to put them up here at WHYGAVS because that's not really what WHYGAVS is for. I should be posting there a couple of times a week and so if you're into that kind of thing, I'd recommend that you check it out.

Pittsburgh Pirate Roundtable: Celebrity baseball bloggers edition. It is a happy Tuesday for the Stats Geek has returned! Today he tackles batting order. Tomo Ohka is out of the Pirates considerations while Tony Armas Jr. is now in. I told you it was going to get worse. Ed Eagle posts his Adam LaRoche mailbag and much like Dejan's Q&A, he mentions the incredibly positive response. That must've made it much easier to pick out e-mails to publish that toe the company line.

Turns out there may have been a little more motivating factor behind DL trading for LaRoche. From The Sporting News Inside Dish: Pirates G.M. Dave Littlefield completed a quest of sorts when he acquired 1B Adam LaRoche from the Braves. Back in 1999, when Littlefield was an assistant G.M. with the Marlins, Florida drafted LaRoche out of a community college in the 42nd round but failed to sign him. I wonder if DL actually forms new opinions on a players or if he's just working from notes that he made out in like 2002. Not that it's a bad thing to keep after a player you like, but damn, every single guy DL goes after is someone he's tried to get in the past and failed to get (if you missed the stories, he wanted to draft Romak in 2003). It's not that I think that this makes the LaRoche trade a bad trade or anything, it's just that something about DL being unable to trade for anyone that hasn't been on his radar for three years seems disconcerting to me. Perhaps I...

Via Deadspin , Major League Baseball has agreed with a gigantic deal with Direct TV to move the MLB Extra Innings package exclusively to the satellite outfit, meaning it won't be available on cable packages anymore. I don't know how many of you that specifically affects (I know there's a lot of MLB.tv users out there), but I'm personally rather disappointed because there's at least a decent chance I'll be living somewhere that I can't get FSP by the end of this summer and, well, I'd at least like the option of being able to watch the Pirates on my TV without having to buy a dish. Oh well, MLB.tv it will have to be for me.

I may have been wrong yesterday, we are ramping up our interest in Tomo Ohka now that Brian Lawrence is a Rockie. DL seems determined to sign a righty this off-season so I suppose I hope it's Ohka because I don't want to see what he scrapes out of the barrel if Ohka goes elsewhere. Charlie is starting his community projections again, and he's kicking things off with Ronny Paulino. Chase Utley got rich this weekend. Dayn Perry ranks the GMs in the big leagues. Littlefield inexplicably fails to finish last, though perhaps he's riding the momentum of the LaRoche trade to what may be an all-time high 27th place finish in a GM poll (via BBTF ).

Via the PG, Brian Lawrence has officially signed with the Colorado Rockies. That pretty much locks Chacon in as the 5-man unless we sign Ohka (unlikely) or someone (Youman or Burnett) wows in camp. Meanwhile, anyone know anything about this Tomlin guy? I guess he's probably not related to Randy. Yeah, I just wanted to mention Randy Tomlin.

With all of the football going on this afternoon, I figure that most of you won't be worried too much about the Buccos. In that case, I'll link to the article I wrote for the Duquesne Duke this week about the Steelers season and their search for a new head coach. My gut feeling says Tomlin, but I have no idea what to make about what's happened the past couple days.

We can argue for months with no end about trading away Brent Lillibridge, the worth of Chris Duffy, and Salomon Torres as a closer. Or we can all agree that this is a bad idea (from today's Hot Stove article in the PG): The Pirates will unveil a new alternate jersey at PirateFest -- a three-day event that opens Friday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center -- that will re-introduce red to the color scheme. The team's colors were red and blue until 1948, and red made a comeback in 1997 before being removed two years ago. Black. Gold. Pittsburgh. I remember reading in the fall in a Perrotto column that there would be a red uniform next year and hoping that it was typical Perrotto BS. Unfortunately, he apparently got one rumor right this winter. I'm already having nightmares. Let's hope it's red trim and not something like this...

Well, it's official. Adam LaRoche and Mike Gonzalez passed their physicals and the trade was officially completed yesterday. For all the conspiracy theorists, Ian Snell has replaced Gonzo on the banner at Pirates.com , meaning there's no turning back on this one. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of yesterday was to hear LaRoche say he's actually excited to come to Pittsburgh. I don't know why that should surprise us, though. Everyone wants to go play somewhere that they can be "the man" and that's what he's going to be here. The fact that he and Bobby Cox didn't get along well in Atlanta was no secret and it probably had something to do with his ADD that went unmedicated until mid-season last year (I don't know why some Pirate fans are freaking out when they read that, it wasn't a secret by any means, in fact it was one of the first things mentioned when all this trade talk started). So he's here and he's happy to be here and rig...

Craig Wilson is going to join Mike Gonzalez in Atlanta for 1 year at $2 million. Trot Nixon picked Cleveland for 1 year and $3 million. These both seem like pretty good deals for the respective teams, especially given the market this off-season. This helps put the Randa and Burnitz contracts into terrible, terrible perspective. Hat tip to apk and Steeltown Mike in the comments.

This week's poll is up. The topic should be obvious. I would encourage you to discuss your response in the comments, I'm curious what everyone thinks. Last week's results are here.

There's lots of reasons that it's hard to judge a trade in the immediate aftermath, there's personal bias, there's the fact that no one will play a meaningful baseball game for 2 and 1/2 months, and there's the problem of not knowing everything that went down before the trade did. Still, after lots of thinking, my take on this trade can be boiled down thusly: It's a good trade for us any way you look at it. We have a huge strength (bullpen) and a huge weakness (lefty bat). We used the strength to fill the weakness. That's a good trade. It's not going to instantly vault us into contention, it's not going to give us a terrifying offense, but it is going to make us better for the next few years. That being said, if DL had the chance to make the exact same trade for Duffy instead of Lillibridge, the trade isn't nearly as good as it could've been. I'm not exactly on the same page as Nate Silver , who's saying Lillibridge is one of the 10 o...

Dave Littlefield makes a good trade and the Doomsday Clock almost simultaneously advances two minutes. Coincidence? I think not.

Dejan is reporting that the Pirates and Braves have finally almost completed the LaRoche trade, with the second player from the Bucs currently unknown. There aren't many players out there who could make this into a bad move for the Bucs, but as of right now (5:45) Gonzo is still on the banner at Pirates.com. I unfortunately have to go sit in a room and listen to someone drone on about the history of science for the next three hours, but hopefully we'll know more by the time I come back. UPDATE (8:01 PM) - Gonzo is still on the banner (apparently the Pirates have discovered our secret!), but there's an article on the main site so this thing is done. Charlie has been all over this thing from the start and he's got a bunch of updates, but it apparently boils down to Mike Gonzalez and Brent Lillibridge for LaRoche and minor league outfielder Jamie Romak. It's kind of a bummer to give up Lillibridge but I'm not really going to complain; middle infielders and reli...

The Pirates are, as per the usual, not doing anything and it's leaving me with a serious dearth of ideas to post about. I may do another "closer look" type thing this afternoon, but I'm between classes now and don't have the time. Instead I can give you some links to browse over lunchtime, even though they won't really be Pirate-related. Pittsburgh scores fourth on UniWatch's list of best uniformed cities. Honestly, I think we could be higher. There should be some bonus points for being the only completely uniformed city in America in terms of colors. Plus, LA and San Fran each have at least one awful uniform apiece. I say we campaign for third next year. Sammy Sosa is working on a deal with the Rangers. Insert George W. Bush joke here. Also, the Rangers aren't interested in Raphael Palmeiro. I just hope DL doesn't find out he's available any time soon. More arbitration numbers are here. Carlos Zambrano's bid is out of this world. He...

Dejan clocks in this afternoon with an update on contracts for the arb. eligible players. Gonzo and Weapon X signed today for $2.35M and $2.14M respectively. That leaves Grabow, Chacon, Sanchez, Gerut, and Castillo all unsigned. The two sides seem pretty close in all the offers, so it's pretty doubtful that a Jack Wilson type situation will erupt anytime soon. Then again, the whole arbitration dispute resulted in Jack having the only good season of his career at the plate. Maybe we should low-ball a few more of these guys.

The LaRoche thing will just not go away. Today Dejan chronicles the attempt of Littlefield to trade Gonzalez straight up for players he's not worth that play on teams with GMs that could think circles around Littlefield. Charlie has an amusing and likely only somewhat fictional account of what the phone conversations between DL and Schuerholz must go like. I don't really know what to add to this conversation anymore. It seems entirely plausible that the Pirates will steadfastly refuse to give Duffy up to complete the LaRoche deal, then turn around in March and deal him to Chicago for Jacque Jones (link via Buccowire ). Maybe I'm reading too much into an after-thought item in the Chicago Tribune on this one, but that sort of thing just has "Dave Littlefield" written allllll over it.

I'm playing around with some sidebar stuff this afternoon, reorganizing things and such. I've added a "Recent Comments" section because I think it's a pretty helpful thing to have around. I still want the sidebar to be navigable and not too huge. If things look funny or out of place while you're on here this afternoon, give it a couple minutes and it'll probably go back to normal pretty quick.

With the Pirates giving me nothing to talk about, I figured I'd take some time to look at players on the roster that don't get as much attention paid to them as others. I have no idea how many of these I'm going to do or if there's even going to be more than one, but I've only been back at school for a week so that means I don't have much else to do at the moment on this dreary holiday afternoon. Anyways, I wanted to take a closer look at Shane Youman's career in the Pirates organization today. Youman is kind of a mystifying guy for me. He took a rather slow journey through the minors (he made his debut at almost 27 last year), he's a big guy, but he doesn't throw hard, he walks way too many guys for a finesse pitcher, and yet his minor league record was 33-13. Still, I saw him pitch a bit last year in Pittsburgh and wasn't that impressed at all by him. He finished up his 21 and 2/3 innings in Pittsburgh last year with a 2.91 ERA and a 1.21 WHIP,...

Charlie's got the 2006 Minor League Equivalents for the Pirates whole system at Bucs Dugout, courtesy of Jeff Sackmann. There's some very interesting stuff there. The Hall of Fame Pirates Roundtable is up with two new questions. I didn't mention this yesterday, but in the Hot Stove Report about Jim Tracy's unbridled optimism (discussed right below), Dejan confirms that the Pirates haven't offered Tomo Ohka a contract to date. Here's an account of how the Nuttings' stake in the ownership grew. They kind of replicated like a virus. Lyle Overbay extended with the Blue Jays for 4 years and $24 million.

Jim Tracy is actually painfully optimistic. You want a manager to be optimistic before the season, but Tracy's optimism borders on delusion. Today in the Hot Stove Report Dejan tries to point out to Tracy how bad his offense could be next year, but Tracy will have none of it. Dejan's point is that Tracy and company's assertion that things will get better next year isn't necessarily a given like it is on the other side of the ball, especially given that Freddy Sanchez, Jason Bay, and Ronnie Paulino can't really be expected to be much better at the plate in 2007 than in 2006. Tracy disagrees with this, of course. Let's take a closer look at his "logic." Freddy Sanchez: He doesn't have to be a batting champ again to be better. If Freddy hit .315 or even .295, would you take that? If he kept finding ways to put the ball in play, kept people moving on the bases and kept playing great defense? I know I would. Being consistent over a long period is part ...

After taking control of the Pirates yesterday, Bob Nutting issued a letter to the fans. You probably got it in your e-mail , saw it on Pirates.com, or maybe read it in the Post-Gazette . This is my letter back to him as a Pirate fan. If you agree with what I'm trying to say, I would encourage you to pass this around to anyone you think would enjoy it and write what you think in the comments. I have no noble intentions of toppling the ownership or converting anyone's perceptions on the Pirates, I just think it's only fair that Pirate fans get their say on this whole thing as well. Seeing as how that's exactly what I am before just about anything else, I figure I'll take a crack at it. Dear Bob, Glad to see you step forward so we Pirate fans can finally put a face to the figure we all know has been running the team from behind the scenes the past couple of years. That's right, we all know. Ask any knowledgeable Pirate fan and they'll say that you're ever...

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Tuesday, January 9th : The Pirates are among the two or three teams that have offered a two-year deal to free-agent pitcher Tomo Ohka. From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Friday, January 11th : Tomo Ohka's agent said the free-agent pitcher has received four contract offers, but he would not say if one of them is from the Pirates. Saying that a team has made an offer to someone before consulting their agent is brilliant reporting. Someone get Brian Lawrence on the phone!

This is Bob Nutting. He's now the primary owner of the Pirates. Today is the first day I've ever seen a picture of him. I don't like this one bit. Picture from Pirates.com.

The following memo was found unattended with no names on it in the Pirates front office today... (OK, not really) Keep Jim Tracy happy Sign his two stepsons to minor league contracts. Trade for his actual son (Wrong Chad Tracy. Screw it.) Reward everyone who's made this team what it is today. Promote Ed Creech to Senior Director of Scouting. Promote Brian Graham to Senior Director of Player Development. Make Bob Nutting the "owner." Placate Dave Littlefield Just refer to him every time I mention building a winning team. Tell him he can spend money and encourage him to go after guys who will never sign here (see: Suppan, Jeff) . Improve the baseball team Remember, 40 men go on the 40 man roster. Romulo! Improve presence in Latin America Use Salomon Torres' incredible baseball academy (screw it, sounds like work) . Sign a Cuban defector who hasn't pitched in two years. Put Romulo! on the 40-man roster (see above) and mention him over and over again. Talk about Re...

The Pirates have "reshuffled" their upper level management with Kevin McClatchy dropping the title of "Managing General Partner" and Bob Nutting becoming the primary owner of the team (meaning the one that is recognized by baseball). McClatchy will apparently stay on as CEO and still be the guy responsible for baseball moves, from what I understand. They also added another Nutting (Bill) to the Board of Directors. McClatchy and Bob Nutting both promise in the article that this is something that needs to happen for the team to win, but somehow I think that more Nuttings with more power can only be a very bad thing for those of us that would like the see the Pirates win baseball games.

Holy cow! Baseball players take amphetamines? Who knew? Barry Bonds is a dick? You've gotta be kidding. Steroids are one thing, but baseball players have been taking greenies forever. Excuse me if I have a hard time working up indignity over this. This is kind of interesting, but only from the perspective that it may complicate negotiations between the Bonds and Giants (which are still on-going with sticking points like Bonds' entourage and his alleged steroid use. For lack of anything else going on, this is going to be the subject of the next WHYGAVS poll. The results of the last one , whether or not DL is going to trade Gonzo, were very very close, though I suspect that if I re-polled everyone on that question starting today, things might come out differently.

So we're talking about signing Tomo Ohka and Brian Lawrence, both at least somewhat reclamation projects (I was wrong about Ohka's injury not being serious, he's got a torn rotator cuff that he's elected to rehab instead of having the surgery that Lawrence had) for what I would assume is a considerable sum of money, meanwhile the Blue Jays sign John Thomson for what amounts to $1.5 million if he makes the Opening Day roster (and only $500,000 if he doesn't). I suppose we'll wait and see what kind of contracts DL is offering Ohka and Lawrence, but my gut says it's more than that.

Deadspin is relaying the news that Sammy Sosa is seriously considering following in the steps of Tuffy Rhodes and heading to Japan to play baseball next year, most likely on account of no one in the US wanting him. Get on the phone, Dave! Big name veteran outfielder that hit homers at one point in his life! Go! Go! Go!

Dejan reminds us that Jody Gerut is, in fact, still with the Pirates even though he hasn't, you know, physically run since June . I suppose that means we can count him out of a right field platoon with Xavier Nady. At least Gerut seems to be taking the high road when it comes to his feud with the team last spring over whether or not the worst knee in the Western Hemisphere needed surgery or not, saying I'm professional. When two sides have their differences and they're defending their rights, sometimes, things happen. I'm here. At the end of the article, Dejan also mentions that the Pirates have offered a contract to Brian Lawrence and it's believed to be a major league contract even though the terms are unknown. Brian Lawrence everybody! What an exciting off-season.

This is either a typo or the guys at Rotoworld are hammering in how worthless they think Javy Lopez would be as a catcher for the Rockies next year. Personally, I'm voting for the latter.

To no one's surprise, Ripken and Gwynn are this year's Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, taking in well more than the necessary vote to get in. Goose Gossage just missed at something like 71.2% and will likely get in sometime in the near future with no shoo-ins coming in future years. Mark McGwire clocked in at about 20-25%, clearly he's got some work to do if he's ever going to have a shot.

To complete the re-JimTracy-fication of the team, Mike Edwards has been signed to another minor league deal. Edwards is a decent back-up, back-up utility guy to have around, so as long as he starts in Indy and not on the 40-man, I won't bitch too much. Awhile back the team announced that lieu of mini-camp this year the Pirates are just rotation a bunch of guys through Pittsburgh in the off-season. In the Trib article linked above, they mention that Hererra, Gorzelanny, Jesse Chavez, Rajai Davis, Brian Rogers, Paulino, and Youman are in town with Duke, Maholm, Sharpless, and Torres, none of whom strayed far from Pittsburgh over the winter. The PG article linked below in the Hererra post talks about Gorzelanny and how his arm troubles from last year are no longer and issue. And oh, it mentions that Victor Santos is officially gone now that he's signed with the Reds. And finally, the Trib article linked above (could I make this any more confusing?) says that the Pirates are one ...

There's a very good article by Dejan in the PG today about Hererra and his journey to leave Cuba and come to the US, specifically Pittsburgh, to pitch. I was most impressed by this part of the article: The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox also showed interest, Herrera said, but he stuck with the Pirates in large part because of Gayo's persistence and because of a visit by general manager Dave Littlefield last summer. That actually seems like some good GMing. Not that it forgives all the bad GMing he does or anything. Anyways, like I said, it's a good read about Hererra. He really hasn't pitched in a year and a half, but since he's only 25 it's probably not as big of a deal as it would be if he was, say, Masumi Kuwata's age. Of course, that is assuming he's 25. The main reason I bring that up is that he pitched on the Cuban National Team from 2001-2004, meaning he started when he was about 19. Certainly not impossible, but it is worth noting, I think...

Still no exciting Pirate news to talk about. The new round-table is up, so you can go check that out. And the Randy Johnson trade/extension is complete. And there's at least one person who agrees with me on the HOF voting , as this article points out that one voter won't be voting for Ripken, Gwynn, or McGwire ( via Baseball Musings ). As you know, the results of the voting are announced tomorrow and Ripken and Gwynn are certainly shoo-ins while guys like Rice, Dawson, Blyleven, Gossage will be waiting by their phones again. ESPN had some fun with Diamond Minds running a series of non-HOFers like those mentioned above against some actual Hall of Famers and looking at the results of 1000 seven games series between the teams.

Dejan's Hot Stove Report talks LaRoche and how even the players want to see him in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, he also tells us this, What are the Pirates' chances of adding LaRoche and his 32 home runs, 90 RBIs and terrific defense? Under the current circumstances, they appear poor. The Braves admire Gonzalez, but they showed he is not enough. They seek a leadoff-hitting second baseman, but the Pirates have no such player... The Braves would love a center fielder to replace Andruw Jones someday, but that, too, seems out as the Pirates have little interest in giving up Chris Duffy. The only answer, it appears, is for the Pirates to trade one of their young starting pitchers: Zach Duke, Ian Snell, Paul Maholm or Tom Gorzelanny. But there again, they have made abundantly clear they have no wish to do so. So... things aren't looking so good then. I would imagine the Kyle Davies talk we heard was the Pirates attempting to obtain some pitching insurance in the case they had to g...

So I'm making my usual morning persual of Rotoworld and the like sites trying vainly to find Pirates news and what do I come across? Marlins purchased the contract of outfielder Chad Hermansen from the Sioux Falls Canaries of the American Association. Yeah, that Chad Hermansen. The now 29-year-old former top prospect hit .317/.400/.579 with 19 homers in 375 at-bats for the Canaries last season. If he still has his legs, he's probably as good of an option in center field as Alex Sanchez or Reggie Abercrombie. Holy crap... HE LIVES!!! You know this is setting us up for the mid-season headline "Pirates trade Marte, Torres to Marlins to regain former top prospect."

If there's one topic I've purposely avoided in the past month or so, it's the Mark McGwire Hall of Fame topic. Why have I avoided it? Because in all honesty, it's an incredibly in depth ethical question that most people don't give the thought to it that they should and I get sick of reading half assed columns fired off about why if Mac might've used steroids he shouldn't get into the Hall when we all know too well that these very same people will vote for Barry Bonds in seven years or whenever he becomes eligible. But I'm finally reading some decent and interesting stuff on it (among that is the Bill Simmons article I'll talk about later, some stuff in SI I'll talk about later, and this article by Gwen Knapp in the SF Chronicle sent to me by reader Eric like a month ago which I won't talk about later, but it's a good read and a well reasoned point so you should check it out if you've got the chance anyways), so I'm finally goi...

So most of Pittsburgh seems to be focused on the whole Bill Cowher leaving thing and there's not really anything Pirate-related happening. Then again, not much has happened on the Pirate front in the past two or three weeks anyways. The biggest news today in the baseball world is the whole Randy Johnson back to the D-Backs trade that's almost finished. Johnson and the D'Backs are discussing an extension for 2008 and have until Sunday to do so and complete the deal. The deal is for reliever Luis Vizcaino and three minor leaguers whom I know little about. I suppose this deal will probably lead to something along the lines of, "Mr. Clemens, it's Mr. Cashman on line 2. He wants to talk about building you a castle."

As I like to do at this time of year, I've been playing around with Baseball Musing's Lineup Analysis tool and the ZiPS projections to take a look at the Pirates 2007 offense. As usual, everything is subject to change with a trade or something and I do know that this is incredibly hypothetical stuff we're dealing with here. The first lineup I looked at is the one I guessed at the other day, Duffy, Wilson, Sanchez, Bay, Nady, Doumit, Castillo, Paulino, and using Duke's 2006 hitting stats for the pitcher. Using the 1998-2002 model, the tool predicts 4.361 runs per game for that lineup , or about 706 runs over162 games. That was the closest I could get to the 680 that the Replacement Level Yankees Blog got using CHONE projections and Diamond Minds, and I think it's pretty close considering that that exact lineup won't play every day and whatever we use off of the bench likely won't match the production, plus there are differences in the projection systems an...

The Replacement Level Yankees Blog has taking the Chone projections and plugged them into the Diamond Mind Simulator 100 times to take a very early (very early because there's still lots of free agents out there) look at the divisions ( via Baseball Musings ) . Because it's so early it's hard to take much to heart from these predictions, but what I found interesting is that with the currently configured line-up, the Pirates are projected to score only 680 runs, 17 less than the next worst offense (the Royals, who are the only team within a light-year of 680) and 11 less than last year's 691 (which was second to last in the league, ahead of the Cubs by two runs and the Cubs have obviously addressed their offensive problems). The pitching staff that Diamond Minds predicts is pretty decent, 734 runs against is actually fifth in the National League, but with the offense it's only good enough for 74 wins. It's just more of the same. Minus the Reggie Sanders/Kenny L...

Dejan's notebook today reports that the Pirates are among the finalists for former Padre pitcher Brian Lawrence. Lawrence was a pretty decent starter when healthy for San Diego, but he's coming off of surgery to fix his labrum and rotator cuff. That's some serious stuff right there. I realize that if we sign him it will most likely be to challenge Chacon for the fifth rotation spot, but I don't understand why we'd go straight to Lawrence when a similar and healthier pitcher is still on the market in Tomo Ohka (Ohka and Lawrence are each other's top similarity matches on Baseball Reference). We haven't spent any more this off-season, who cares if the Mets are bidding on Ohka? Spend some money, get a player that you know will help the team instead of one that might. Ugh.