Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

Time for another look at the winter ball stats . Jose Tabata's got his OPS up to .729 and he just hit his first homer. He seems to be slowly coming around since his slump that followed his hot start. Jorge Cortes is hitting well in Venezuela, but he's almost 30 and been in the minor leagues since 1998. Luis Cruz is coming around in the Mexican League and showing some nice plate patience. Ronny Paulino is mauling in the Dominican with four homers in 25 at-bats. Shelby Ford continues to be the only thing worth watching in Arizona, flashing some nice power (7 of his 20 hits are for extra bases including 3 homers). Brian Friday, Steve Pearce, Jim Negrych and Jamie Romak are still putting up ugly lines. Negrych is impressive in that his OBP is 40 points higher than his slugging. On the pitching side of things, Kyle Bloom is dominating in Hawaii, Evan Meek is putting up some nice numbers in Mexico, and Romulo has thrown three nice innings in Venezuela. And try not to look at the othe...

Today was the day for eligible minor leaguers to file for free agency and a number of them did so. Filing from the Pirates were Chris Duffy, John Van Benschoten, Marino Salas, Carlos Maldanado, and a bunch of inconsequential players. Josh Bonifay is also on the list, but that can't be right. Has he played since 2006? Some of these guys will probably re-sign with the Bucs, but Pirates.com has an article about Duffy , which says that he basically quit his Mexican winter team and told the Pirates he was leaving. There's a joke here about how many times this has happened before, but it's probably a little too mean. It's a shame that Duffy's career has taken the turns that it has since 2006, but these things happen some times. The article also mentions that Evan Meek was put back on the 40-man to prevent him from filing. This may seem insane to people unfamiliar with his work after the early season debacle, but he was quite good in the minors. I saw him pitch against Dur...

Looking for anything to post about on a slow day (tomorrow: Road to 17: 1995), I decided to look at the Fall Ball stats . Bad idea. Check out some of these OPSs: Steve Pearce (Mexico)- .638 Jose Tabata (Venezuela)- .678 Jamie Romak (AFL)- .772 Steve Lerud (AFL)- .412 Jim Negrych (Hawaii)- .640 The one bright spot? Shelby Ford is raking along at .899 in the AFL. It's a hitter's league, but at least he's hitting. Kyle Bloom continues to be the most interesting pitcher pitching right now, putting up great numbers in Hawaii. Jesse Chavez is pitching well in the Dominian Republic. Of course fall numbers aren't the end of the world. More than anything, it's a chance for guys to work on things they can't during the season and keep swinging through the winter. Though I'd be really thrilled if Tabata started hitting.

I wanted to do a "Road to 17" this morning and 1994 is probably halfway done, but I had an exam to work on all weekend and it didn't happen. So that should be done for tomorrow (I'm hoping to do two of those a week from here out), but until then let's spend some time talking about the latest minor leaguer to be featured in a blurb on Pirates.com -- Brad Lincoln. There's not much terribly interesting about the article itself, your typical blurbs about how excited the team is about his recovery, how he pitched this year, etc. What did grab my eye was the part at the end about starting Lincoln at AA this year and fast-tracking him. I knew the Pirates were happy with how he performed coming off of the surgery, but his numbers were far from eye-popping at any level. Could they really be THAT happy with him? I did a little digging to try and find the answer, and I think Stark's reasoning becomes a bit clearer if you look at Lincoln's splits with Lynchburg ...

I would rather read one story about the Pirates signing a South African short-stop prospect than a hundred about Doug Mientkiewicz, Chris Gomez, Jason Michaels, and Luis Rivas. From yesterday's PG: The Pirates, trying to mine all areas to get prospects into their minor league system, hope they've found a diamond in the rough in Mpho Ngoepe from South Africa. Ngoepe, 18, is a switch-hitting shortstop who signed with the Pirates about a month ago, then made a cameo appearance in the Instructional League in Bradenton, Fla. "We need to find talent wherever it is," general manager Neal Huntington said. "It will be a great story if he makes it to the big leagues." The Pirates scouted him in Italy over the summer for some European/African baseball showcase to watch Ngoepe and were impressed enough with what sounds like some very raw baseball talent to sign him. He's going to play for South Africa in the WBC this spring and though he'll likely be overwh...

Pedro Alvarez is down in the Florida Instructional League right now while the Pirates get their first look at their top draft pick of 2008. All reports are good (of course they are, what are they going to say? "Damn, this guy sucks, why did we pick him?") but apparently he's not going to be able to play winter ball anywhere, which is a little disappointing. Still, they're saying he worked out during his hold out and I honestly don't think this is going to delay his rise through the minors as much as people say it is (see David Price as an example ... unless I'm misremembering and Price pitched in the fall last year). As for the rest of the fall/winter ballers, you can find their stats here . Many of the hitters, including Jose Tabata and Steve Pearce, have cooled off after fast starts. Kyle Bloom is still putting up awesome numbers in Hawaii on the mound (he should get a roster spot before the Rule 5). The rest of the pitchers? Nothing too exciting unless you...

With almost no Pirate news coming in the past couple days, let's take a look at how the Bucs' young players that are playing right now are doing. For a complete list, you can check here . Jamie Romak looks awful in the Arizona Fall League with his .182 slugging percentage in seven games. Shelby Ford, on the other hand, looks quite good with his .308/.426/.462 line, though the standard caveat about the AFL being an extreme hitter's league applies. Pitchers are harder to judge in these leagues because even the starters only throw a few innings, but Jeff Sues has had four nice outings in the AFL. In Hawaii, Jim Negrych is continuing to do what he always does, which is get on base, with his .390 OBP. He may miss some time with an injury , but it doesn't seem to be all that serious. Kyle Bloom also has a nice line after four starts and 15 innings in what is also, if I remember correctly, a pretty extreme hitters league. In the foreign leagues, Steve Pearce has 11 hits and 6 ...

As I mentioned a couple of times here, I made the trek out to Durham last night to watch the Indianapolis Indians in the first game of their four-game set against the Bulls. I would've liked to see Ohlendorf pitch, but I think the rest of the series will be televised and hopefully I can catch him when he makes his start. Getting to see David Price pitch for the Rays was a nice consolation, even if he wasn't that impressive ( FanHouse post ). Anyways, I took a some pictures and have some anecdotes to share, so let's get to it. The aforementioned Price. As you can see, I watched him warm up and it's easy to see the potential, even though he didn't pitch all that well last night. Yep. That's Chris Duffy. Still doing what he does: slapping singles, running fast, and not doing much of anything else. This is not a very good shot of Cutch, but it does give you an idea of just how small he is. He's not just small, he's actually almost Ecksteinian. Still, he'...

This happened yesterday, but Brad Lincoln got the call up to Lynchburg yesterday . I'm guessing that the team had a set number of innings they wanted to see from him at Hickory and they moved him along once he hit that number. He pitched very well in his first few starts, but not so well since then (besides his Matt Capps-like control). The most logical reason for him to be moving up at this point is that as a top draft pick that's 23 years old, he simply doesn't belong in low-level Class A. He's either hit an inning number or convinced the Pirates that he's healthy, and so they're moving him along. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see him moved to AA before this season ends, even if he struggles at Lynchburg. Remember that in a draft that was pretty deep with pitching, Lincoln was regarded by a some people to be the best college pitching available that year and most prospect lists had him among the top two or three. He'd likely be in AAA if he hadn...

A lot of people are asking if I watched the Futures Game today. I didn't watch much, but I did tune in long enough to see McCutchen's first at-bat. Every time I see him I'm alarmed by how small he looks, though he quickly got me over that by launching a foul ball into the second deck of the left-field stands in Yankee Stadium. The AB I saw ended in a flyout, but he looked pretty comfortable at the plate. David Pinto at Baseball Musings had a different observation : Andrew McCutchen just led off for the USA. He's standing at the plate wearing number 24, and he looks just like Rickey Henderson. He's even playing leftfield. Well, now there's a comparison that should make every Pirate fan smile, even if it was purely superficial. Here's hoping he runs like the wind and refers to himself in nothing but the third person. Reader Trevin also passed a long a link to the fantasy baseball review of the game , which has some very kind things to say about Cutch at the ve...

Maybe the A's are stealing headlines with their ridiculous $4.25 million signing bonus for a teenager from the Dominican, but it looks like the Pirates are actually closing in on signing a pretty good Latin American prospect themselves. From the PG: They were negotiating yesterday on the final details of a signing bonus for Jonathan Barrios, a 16-year-old shortstop out of Colombia who made the final top-25 lists of two publications. Barrios was the star talent at an academy in his homeland called Prospect Sport, owned and operated by Chicago White Sox shortstop Orlando Cabrera. "We feel pretty good about getting it done," general manager Neal Huntington said yesterday of signing Barrios. I don't really think that top-25 lists of teenagers are the best thing in the world, but hey, at least it's something.

I saw this yesterday, but forgot to post about it. The Pirates released Olivo Astacio, who was one of the off-season surprise adds to the 40-man when Huntington was on his crazed, "I love relievers with high strikeout counts!" binge. The key text, from the PG : The Pirates today unconditionally released pitching prospect Olivo Astacio for what they described as a "significant violation of organizational policy." Absolutely no word as to what that significant violation may be, but if it were a failed steroid test we'd probably have heard about it already. The wording of the statement makes me think we're going to find out he's in some kind of trouble with the law, but that's just idle speculation on my part and you shouldn't take it as any more than that.

The more prospect savvy among you have certainly taken notice of Andrew McCutchen's early season line by now: .282/.378/.549 with 4 homers and 7 doubles in 82 plate appearances. That's certainly a great start for a 21-year old in AAA and within no time at all, that line is going to start popping up all over the place in the Pittsburgh sports media (if it hasn't already, admittedly my distance disconnects me more than I'd like from time to time), which means that by this time next week (if not sooner), people are going to be clamoring for McCutchen to get a call to Pittsburgh and start over everyone's favorite whipping boy, Jason Bay. All I can really say to that is, "please not yet." It's awesome that Cutch is off to such an good start in AAA. I had some serious concerns about him after he skipped past A+ and straight to AA, where he struggled for most of the year last year. The fact that he's hitting this quickly in AAA is a great sign that he...

It's not fair to talk about Andrew McCutchen and not Neil Walker, especially because Walker suddenly seems fairly relevant to the Pirates in a more immediate sense. He's killing the ball this spring (5-for-16 with three of those five hits doubles) and seems to be improving his defense. Kevin Goldstein even thinks he might be ready for mid-season (BP subscription required). Walker had a pretty strong year in AA last year, though he faltered at the end. I saw him play after his call-up to Indy and thought he looked pretty comfortable at third, despite all the errors he had been making. Accordingly, I'm not really surprised to hear he's adapting well to the position. After all of the strife that went into that position change for Walker, third base is actually a pretty serious position of need for the Buccos right now, as I don't see Jose Bautista ever advancing beyond a utility type player that's over-matched as an every day guy. I do think Walker should head to ...

You know what's a pretty bad sign? When I see the headline, "Prospects trying to make a name for themselves," and I have to stop and think who "prospects" might be referring to before I read the article. As it turns out, the article is about what you'd expect after the only off-day of the spring; it's fluff about every minor leaguer who's not on the casual fan's radar. I'm not going to talk about them, because they make me sad. Instead, I'm going to spend some time talking about our prospect. You know the one. McCutchen. Honestly, I'm mildly terrified that putting McCutchen in AAA this year is going to ruin him, or at least set him back a year. I know that I'm the same guy that wants Steve Pearce fast-tracked (or, semi-fast tracked since DL started him slowly, but you get the point) to the majors this year and maybe my thinking Cutch isn't ready for AAA is inconsistent with that, but let's call it a gut feeling based on t...

So, there's this whole Arizona Fall League going on that I've been kind of ignoring, mostly because the only player there I'm mildly interested in is Andrew McCutchen. Let's see how the Bucs are doing on the Phoenix Dirt Dogs (who've made it to the finals): Andrew McCutchen: .286/.381/.378 You know what's a bad sign? A slugging percentage lower than an OBP in the Arizona Fall League. After showing some surprising pop in 2006, he's shown none of that in 2007. He's still very young so it's hard to hit a panic button on him as a prospect yet, especially because he's doing a good job of getting on base in Arizona, but let's just say it's not surprising when Pirate prospects don't live up to the hype. Nyjer Morgan: .258/.355/.355, Super Speed Rating: 1,098,762 Somehow, Nyjer Morgan has become the most polarizing player in the Pirates system. That's sad. I wish we had someone better to argue over. Just remember that the AFL is always a...

In case you don't feel like slogging through the liveblog below, here are my thoughts from watching Indianapolis play tonight: Steve Pearce- Dude can hit. He didn't have a hit tonight, but he hit the ball hard every time up. He's not a very big guy, he's listed at 5'11" and 200 lbs, but I'd guess he's smaller on both counts. That was really surprising to me. Neil Walker- Looked pretty overmatched by the AAAA Jae Seo tonight. He worked him away with breaking stuff and came back in on him a couple times. He made a really nice play at third coming across the infield and bare-handing the ball, but then he almost booted an easy one (he recovered and made the play). Andrew McCutchen- Seeing him on TV really reinforces just how young he is. He looks like a boy among men out on the field. I know the comparison everyone likes to make is to a young Bonds, but he's actually smaller than that. He does do a nice job in center field and had a hit tonight, which i...

The cable guy finally made his way to my apartment this afternoon. This is fantastic news for a couple reasons. First off, I no longer have to rely on X-Files DVD as my prime source of entertainment (I've been on a meandering fifteen month quest to watch the entire series but man, Season 7 is a drag). Secondly, the Durham Bulls are actually on TV for about half of their games this year. And included in that half is tonight's game against an Indianapolis lineup featuring Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, Steven Pearce (and Don Kelly and Brad Eldred!!). I would like to tell you I'm not too bored to liveblog this game, but I am. At the very least I'll focus on the at-bats of the players that matter and make fun of the players that don't. Pregame- Don Kelly is batting leadoff for Indy!!! Who let Jim Tracy into the Indians clubhouse?!? Kelly is playing short while Bixler is playing second. I'm already pissed and the first pitch hasn't even been thrown yet. Pearce is...

The fan base is getting restless. Protests are planned, die-hard fans are listless, even bloggers are bored with the Pirates. This is about as bad as I can remember things in my 2+ years of blogging. I mean, this is really ugly. But little did I know the Pirates had a fool-proof plan to turn things around. Bring back Wayback . Yep, John Wasdin is back with the team. On one hand, he can't be worse than Jonah Bayliss. On the other hand, oh wait, yes he can, he's Wayback Wasdin. And just when I was about to institute the brilliant name suggested for Bayliss in the comments, "Gas Can." Jesse Chavez and Franquellis Osoria are weeping together in the Indianapolis clubhouse right now.

This was actually in yesterday's paper and I saw it in there, but I missed posting about it, so let's take it now. The Pirates signed pitcher Dewon Brazelton to a minor league contract yesterday. I saw that and thought I remembered Brazelton being a pretty good prospect in the D'Rays organization once. Looking at his Baseball Cube page , I could have only been thinking about 2002. That's a long time ago. Not much else to make of this signing. He's a huuge reclamation project and I can't see much coming of this signing. Instead, let's use this post to catch up on some of the other minor league pitcher's we picked up in the off-season. Yoslan Herrera- 6.47 ERA, 1.66 WHIP, 27 Ks, 16 BBs, 6 homers allowed in 48 and 2/3 innings in Altoona. Clearly the two-year layoff was not his friend. Alay Soler- 4.26 ERA, 1.55 WHIP, 19 Ks, 15 BBs in 31 and 2/3 innings in Altoona. It's pretty obvious why the Mets didn't want him. This guy looks worthless. Serguey L...