Morales proves healthy in March

Angels are on record to be looking for a 5th starter

Previous interest in OF Garret Jones

All leads in this direction…

I keep mulling over all of the possible outcomes and my musings always bring me back to one guy – Pedro Alvarez. If Pedro starts to come on like we all hope he will, it could be a pretty interesting summer in Pittsburgh.

Personally, I’m very happy with the Pirates’ off-season.

Burnett and Bedard could be a great combo in the rotation. Certainly a chance to be much better than the guys they replaced (Maholm and Ohlendorf).

Barmes and Barajas made not be flashy guys or huge upgrades, but they certainly solidify 2 of the most erratic positions (of late) on the Pirates at SS and C. I think Barmes is an incremental upgrade over Cedeno. He might not show Ronny’s flashes of brilliance, but he also won’t show the huge game-changing blunders either. Barajas while he’s more like Snyder, since he’s the starting catcher, we have to look at him in comparison to Doumit. Again, nowhere near the bat of Doumit, but since Doumit’s defense has completely fallen off a cliff, Barajas might be the more solid, all-around guy.

I’m excited for 2012. I know people want to downplay the first half of 2011. But, that team was in first place in July with ZERO production out of 3rd base, nearly ZERO production out of 1B and career minor leaguers as the starting catchers after seeing a whole organization’s worth of catchers going down.

Even if the Pirates are only slightly better than last year, they may be the only team in the NL Central that has taken a step (even though it may be a tiny one) forward. The Cards and Reds (and possibly the Brewers) are still formidable teams, but you certainly can’t say any of them are better off than they were last year. Will it be enough? Who knows?

I am still afraid we will see more of Correia than we would like.

The natural pessimism of Pirate fans being what it is, it’s always easy to worry about stuff like this. NH has made a lot of mistakes at the ML level, but he seems at least to be able to recognize them and is far more willing than the team was under Bonifay and DL to cut short his losses. He released Morris early in the season (OK, that wasn’t his mistake), released Overbay, dumped Diaz, released Ramon Vasquez with a year on his contract, etc. Correia doesn’t suck to the point of being a candidate for release, but I don’t think NH is going to let him get in the way of better rotation options. If nothing else, they only control Correia for a year. Karstens, Morton and J-Mac are all longer-term assets. I seriously doubt NH will lose sight of that.

And the idea that they brought Bedard in just to “compete” for a spot is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.

or Moskos

or Correia!