Tabata Pleases Pirates

Tabata coming on strong

Chuck Finder's piece in today's PG (which I'm sure all of you read religiously) has some nice things to say about Jose Tabata:

The Pirates continue to position him there not as a possible McCutchen replacement, but rather to improve his defensive skills. In Scottsdale, they asked him to play a shallow center field -- a la McCutchen, who finished fourth in National League rookie of the year voting despite missing the majors' first two months. They wanted to improve Tabata's reads, routes, reactions.

It should be interesting to see how things play out in Spring Training, according to NH, though I think the "development work" remark sounds like another "Wait until the clock is right" to me - not that that's a bad thing:

"He has made quality adjustments to his game, and those adjustments are paying dividends. While we are pleased with his progress, we still feel we have some development work left with Jose. As a result, he is likely to open the season in Triple-A, but, like McCutchen this past spring, the door is not fully closed."