Prospects... kind of

I meant to talk about this column yesterday about the Pirates farm system because it reminded me of some things Littlefield said at Piratefest, but it slipped my mind. Anyways, Dejan's Sunday Hot Stove report dealt mostly with prospects after a conversation with Brian Graham, the scouting director. As has already been pointed out by Charlie in a post yesterday, not many of these guys are actually prospects. Rajai Davis and Ray Sadler certainly are not (mostly because of lack of talent and being too old), Matt Peterson and Shane Youman are awful, Adam Boeve is way too old for his level (though maybe I shouldn't be too hard on him, Wilbur Miller compares him to Chris Shelton and we really are starved for power in Pittsburgh).

This all goes hand in hand with a question that was asked to Littlefield at the "Ask Management" session on Saturday. He was asked to name the next wave of prospects we could expect to see here in Pittsburgh, and the first two names he reeled off were Matt Capps and Josh Sharpless. Now I saw Capps a couple times last year and thought his stuff looked good (his numbers after his callup weren't great, but he got unlucky in a couple spots and seemed to be throwing the ball real well, especially for a guy that started the year in Hickory) and I'm as happy as anyone to see a guy with the season Sharpless had last year make the 40-man, but when the first two names that come off your GM's lips when asked about prospects are RELIEF PITCHERS, well, let's just say things could be better. Keeping that in mind, reading stuff like this shouldn't really surprise anyone at all.

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