The Post Gazette reports that the Pirates like Ryan Doumit's progress behind the plate.

Me too, and I don't doubt that there are tons of people who have honest and well-founded opinions about the Doumit/Paulino controversy that has raged at various points during the past couple years, but I can't help feeling that the defense and game calling issues were mostly red herrings. Doumit has been better defensively this year than he has in the past, but he was never so bad that he shouldn't be playing; Paulino, supposedly the good one, was just just terrible last year. The game calling issue mostly came down to Jim Tracy's preference to avoid calling games from the dugout. His love for Paulino may have had more to do with laziness than anything else.

This year, Doumit looks better, sure. But even if he hadn't improved much, my guess is that he'd still be playing a lot, because really what this management group likes is the fact that he can hit. And I've noticed that Paulino is looking toward the dugout between pitches a lot more this year.

The same article, by the way, reports that the Pirates have reduced their choices for the first round of the draft to seven players.