Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

From Pirates.com : "The reality is we're just trying to acquire talent and deepen the talent level in the organization. That's our main goal," Huntington said in a discussion about the club's potential interest in free agents. "As we are looking at the 2009 Pirates, we'd love to upgrade the offense, upgrade our pitching and rebuild the bench. But ultimately, our focus is on acquiring talent." [...] "We're not going to play on the first tier [of players] and the first tier is going to establish the market," Huntington said. "We are in touch with a number of players that we are interested in, but much of their decisions will come after that market is set. We're not going to set the market at any rate." I'm not sure, but I think "we'd love to upgrade the offense, upgrade our pitching, and rebuild the bench" may be my favorite quote from any GM in recent Pirate history. I feel like someone should make that in...

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 ...

With no actual Pirate news for the past couple of weeks, I guess this qualifies : "[Michaels and Mientkiewicz] have both played well for us in the field and they've been great for us in the clubhouse," Huntington said. "They are the type of people that we would love to bring back. And it's our hope that we'll be able to provide a situation for them that they feel is the one that they want." Jason Michaels had the quietest awful year of anyone I can remember. People in Pittsburgh loved the guy for a couple of big hits he had early on in his time with the Pirates, but his final line was .228/.300/.382. There's just no reason to bring any of that back. I don't care if he had 52 hits and 44 RBIs, I wish he had a lot more freaking hits. The Mientkiewicz intangibles debate is one for a different time, but at least he can get himself on base and has had an average OPS+ the last two years and woud have some value in returning to the team. I still hope H...

A long time ago, during the first off-season that WHYGAVS existed (nearly three years!), I wrote this : ... Dave Littlefield set out in the offseason with the goal of building a team that wouldn't actually compete, but instead appear to be improved enough to get the average, typical Pirate fan interested in the team. He doesn't care what I think, I'll probably be at games next year no matter what. He probably doesn't care what most of you readers think, because let's face it, if you live in Pittsburgh and take the time to read Pirates blogs in the offseason you're probably going to games next year as well. If you don't live in Pittsburgh, you probably aren't going to the games either. His goal this offseason was to reach the typical late March-early August Pirate fan whose ears perk up every spring for baseball, then get disillusioned by the time the Steelers break camp, the ones who won't come to games if the team isn't playing well. That was wr...