The Bucs may trade Craig Wilson to the Seattle Mariners for pitcher Joel Pineiro, Dejan Kovacevic reports.
If it's one-for-one and if Pineiro's healthy, I'd like this trade. Piniero's coming off a bad season, but he's only 27 and has already had some success at the major-league level, so there could be some upside there. The Pirates would control his rights through 2007. Again, it's disappointing that the Pirates are considering trading one of their few competent hitters for a pitcher, but at least Pineiro (unlike John Thomson) won't be a free agent after this year.
-P- This is an excellent article on Jim Tracy's managerial tendencies, and it's encouraging. Tracy exploits platoon advantages. He talks a lot about sacrifice bunts, but actually rarely uses them, despite playing in a very tough pitchers' park. He uses his bench players. He attempts steals when he has the players to do it: Last year he didn't, and the Dodgers were only successful in 61% of their attempts, but they attempted 50 fewer stolen bases than they did in 2004, when they converted 71% of their attempts.
Of course, none of this relates to his disappointing reluctance to play scouting-unfriendly players like Hee Seop Choi and Antonio Perez or his tendency to call out his GM in the press, but it's nice to know that Tracy's tenure might not be the small ball out buffet Tracy talks about so much.