The Pirates are breaking ground in the Dominican

After all the talk last year about opening up a new baseball academy in the Domincan Republic, it looks like the Pirates are actually going to do it. There's not many details (those are coming in about a week and a half), but the groundbreaking ceremony is January 22nd and the Pirates appear ready to sink somewhere in the ballpark of $5 million into this thing, which Charlie has discovered is a pretty decent amount.

I'll be honest, part of me feels a little sad reading this story. It's so utterly pathetic that it's taken until 2007 to get this done that it's hard to be excited by it. I'd like this story much more if it were ten years old and talked about how the Pirates were looking to build on their unlikely success of 1997 by building up a cheap base of good talent from Latin America. Still, it's been said time and time again that Latin American scouting was a big flaw of the Littlefield administration, and so it's nice to see something finally done about it. And for all of his flaws as an owner, it really looks like Bob Nutting stepped up to the plate on this one. Unless he's trimming that $5 million from the major league roster.