Jenifer Langosch writes that the Pirates are unlikely to do much during the Winter Meetings. They're unlikely to do very much to fix their first-base problem, because they don't yet know whether Derrek Lee will accept their arbitration offer. (If Lee is planning on rejecting it, as expected, he could do the Pirates a big favor today by just telling them. Also, Langosch writes that the Pirates might not be able to do much with their rotation issues, either.

Second, the Pirates could find that they have to wait for some of the big-name free agents to settle before the rest of the market falls into place. That is particularly the case with first base and pitching, the club's primary areas of need.

One might think that the signings of Chris Capuano and Bruce Chen would have already set the market for the types of pitchers the Pirates can afford.

We haven't yet heard much about what the Pirates plan to do at third base. I can't imagine they're comfortable just going with Pedro Alvarez without some sort of serious contingency plan, and yet we never seem to hear about that.