40-man is set

The Pirates set their 40-man roster for the winter, dropping reliever Jeff Miller, Tike Redman, Bobby Hill, and, somewhat surprisingly, Michael Restovich to make room for reliever Josh Sharpless, middle infielders Craig Stansbury and Javier Guzman, and Rob Mackowiak-in-training Yurendell DeCaster.

Not really any surprises either way if I'm not mistaken. Tike pretty much had to go with both Duffy and McLouth likely to be in the big leagues next year. By dropping him they leave room for Rajai Davis, a younger version of him. Jeff Miller had a rough year and I know was a name I had heard as a candidate to be dropped. As much as I like Bobby Hill (and it pains me to say this) I'm not really sure there was much room for him with Sanchez emerging. Wigginton at least offers some power against lefties, something Hill doesn't bring to the table. By adding Stansbury and Guzman, that would've left like 7 middle infielders on the 40-man, which would be pretty ridiculous. The biggest surprise was dropping Restovich, who was kept on the 25-man all year with promises from Littlefield that he'd be here in 2006, then was sent to Venezuela where he's killing the ball. Instead, he's dropped off the roster, probably for DeCaster.

Anyways, it looks like they did a fairly decent job here. There's not a Chris Shelton that we failed to protect and I don't think any of the guys we're dropping are going to come back and haunt us. It does bring an end to the Michael Restovich era (which I'm going to have to pretend never happened, just like other things that I don't understand) and leaves us with squat just a little over two years after the Aramis Ramirez trade but those moves were kind of unavoidable and hey, we did get rid of Tike.