-This Baseball America article features short profiles of four Pirates prospects: Chad Blackwell, Kyle Bloom, J.J. Furmaniak, and Steven Pearce.
-Here's an article about the Bucs' bench, which should indeed be pretty good. The problem, of course, is that many of the regular players are no better than, and in some cases worse than, the bench guys in the first place. Having a good bench isn't hard to do if you put the wrong players there.
-If this is what "Tracyball" is like, count me out. Freddy Sanchez swung at a pitch "well out of the strike zone," grounded the ball to shortstop, and moved Nate McLouth into scoring position. McLouth later scored on a single by Sean Casey. And the Pirates lost 4-1.
That doesn't sound so great to me - sure, the Pirates scored a run, but they ended up needing five to win. They would've had a better chance of scoring five if Sanchez had stopped piddling around and gotten on base.
Elsewhere in the article, Ian Snell pitched reasonably well against the Tigers today.
-CBS has a profile of Jim Tracy that I'm including here mostly because one doesn't often see out-of-town pieces about the Pirates that are this long.