More fun stuff from everyone's favorite New York sportswriter, Bill Madden, claiming that his financial numbers he used concerning the Pirates back in August were, in fact, truthful. His chief ally in all of this: Scott Boras, who as we all know is about honesty first and foremost. I realize that regional sportswriters aren't necessarily the most well-informed folks when it comes to teams outside their region, but he seems to have some sort of serious vendetta with the Buccos, specifically the management team.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2009/11/21/2009-11-21_new_york_mets_offseason_focus.html?page=1

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/12547223/lincecums-backtoback-cy-youngs-draw-durability-question-not-hof

I know this has little if anything to do with the Bucs. But articles like this bother the bejesus outta me. Just wanted to know everyone's thoughts about Tiny Tim. And contrary to Knobbie's point in the article, it seems to me that even if he "holds up" at least another 5 years, people will keep asking the same questions about whether he can hold up when he's 35. My favorite part...how every scout's favorite "horse," with the great delivery, Chris Carpenter--guy breaks down more than a Yugo.

Don't have all the info yet (who we dropped), but was able to find this on usatoday fantasy...

Pirates purchased the contracts of RHP Brad Lincoln, RHP Ramon Augero, RHP Bryan Morris and OF Gorkys Hernandez.

and

Pirates claimed RHP Chris Jakubauskas off waivers from the Mariners.

Jakubauskas posted a 5.32 ERA and 1.27 WHIP in 35 appearances (eight starts) with the Mariners this season while battling a few shoulder issues. He turns 31 in December, but the Bucs are desperate for pitching.

These came out at 4:46 and 4:48 pm

Have not been overly impressed with Jakubauskas been haven't watched really close.

Now that teams are starting to finalize their rosters prior to today's deadline, I thought it might be fun to create a thread and look at some of the players who will be available to us in this year's Rule 5 draft. We'll be picking second in the draft order, and as such, should have a good opportunity to come away with a useful talent (or two?).

Here are some of the options I like - please add your own in the comments. I'll try to add more to my list periodically, time permitting, though I'm going to be out of town for most of this weekend.

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http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings091119

that's the link above to the ESPN article by Jason Stark referencing Scott Boras' comments about small market ownership not properly using the $$$ alotted them in revenue sharing. The Pirates actually come up a couple times in the span of the article, but to Bucco fans this thought isn't anything new as we've all accused Nutting of doing this for years.

*sigh*

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I saw that Rob Neyer had posted his take on the McCutchen vs. Coghlan debate and was a bit surprised when I saw this part:

Knowing that, this would have been an awful choice if McCutchen had played well in center field ... but it's not clear that he did. Last winter, Baseball America wrote about McCutchen, "He has outstanding speed that makes him a basestealing threat and a potential Gold Glover. He has outstanding instincts and an average arm in center field."

You give me a Gold Glover with McCutchen's hitting stats and I'll give you a Rookie of Year, even if he plays on 108 games. But McCutchen doesn't seem to have played Gold Glove defense in 2009. According to Ultimate Zone Rating, he was average at best. According to the Fielding Bible data, he was one of the worst center fielders in the majors.

I looked up the numbers and sure enough, there, towards the bottom of the list, was Andrew McCutchen with a -17.  Not quite the ridiculous -37 from McLouth last year, but pretty bad, and far worse than I expected.  UZR/150 didn't have him nearly as bad at -1.0, but still not nearly as good as you would hope for from a player like McCutchen.

Interestingly, both measures had the aforementioned McLouth coming out as a decent CF in the positive range.  Maybe I'm just reacting to a small sample, but is it possible that coaching/positioning somehow plays with these numbers for Pirate center fielders?

In my youth, I remember the Pirates first three batters as "Cash, Clines, and Clemente".  And I remember the hope of victory which was sustained through that era, the Willie Stargell era, and the brief time of the Drabek, VanSlyke, and Bonds era.  Folks, it has been 17 miserable years.  Every spring, for us Pirates fans, hope springs eternal because we are tied with every other team--0 wins and 0 losses.  And then our owners trot out this lowly paid, minor league talent with a few legitimate major leaguers...we are the consecutive-year losingest major sports team in the history of sports ever.  This league needs a salary minimum, not a salary max.  The current owners don't care at all about fielding a winner...they care about convincing those of us with eternal hope that we should go to one of the greatest ballparks in baseball and watch the lowest paid team lose because the owners "have a plan".  Well the plan is pitiful...they don't care...we have no established talent...and mark my words, they will sell the team when they have squeezed every dollar out of our hopes.  We are blessed to have the Rooney's and Mario who care about fielding winners.  We need to somehow boycott this disgrace and find someone in Pittsburgh baseball who cares about fielding a winner.  I don't know if this post will see the light of day...

I saw this on MLBTradeRumors.com last night.  Apparently this comes for Rosenthal on his blog and he hears that a number of teams approached the Bucs about Doumit during the GM meetings.  Reportedly, NH would move Doumit for the right package.


http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/11/pirates-could-trade-doumit.html

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From Sickels Blog:

Veal looked terrific. His mechnics have been COMPLETELY rebuilt, much smoother, much better command, throwing FB in the low 90s with better breaking stuff than he’s shown in years.

Pretty nice words to hear from a guy like Sickels. It's encouraging, and combined with the other stuff written about Veal and his stats so far, it makes me feel like there may be something there. I guess well have to wait to the regular season to see if this is for real.