-P- The Giants just added the recently-DFAed Shea Hillenbrand, which means they won't be needing Sean Casey anymore. The Giants only gave up reliever Jeremy Accardo; this is a good move for them.
-P- Dejan Kovacevic wonders if the high number of steals for the Indy Indians is "a sign of hope." It isn't. Basestealing is not a particularly important part of scoring runs, and anyway most of the basestealing at Indianapolis has been done by guys like Rajai Davis, Rich Thompson and J.J. Furmaniak, none of whom should have any real future with the Pirates.
-P- Kovacevic also reports that pitching coach Jim Colborn is messing with Paul Maholm's delivery. Uh oh. If Colborn's work with Oliver Perez and Zach Duke is any indication, we might worry that Maholm will go from bad to worse in the coming weeks.
-P- The Trib reports that the Bucs won't be trading Matt Capps. I guess there are worse players to refuse to trade, but why a team in the Bucs' position would want to call a reliever "untouchable" is beyond me. (Van Slyke agrees; his response to this development involves lots of capital letters.) Good relievers are luxuries; if your team is in bad shape and you can trade one for someone who might become a good position player or starter, you should probably do it. Also, as Baseball Prospectus has shown, relievers' performances fluctuate a lot from year to year. I have no particular reason to be pessimistic about Capps, but the Bucs shouldn't be surprised if, in two years, he's injured or not very effective. I wonder if the Colorado Rockies were one of the teams that the Trib reports were calling about Capps? Rotoworld thinks so. [UPDATE: Yep. Also, check out Romo Phone Home's awesome rant on this subject.]
-P- From the "At least we're not _________" department:
"I kept telling people, `You know, we invested a lot of money in this guy. Isn't it our job to help him succeed?' Nobody really listened to me. I guess they thought they knew what Dee was all about. I guess they thought they were doing the right things."
A former Royals employee is not so kind: "I've never seen any organization (bleep) with a player the way the Royals did with Dee Brown. They ruined him."
This is a great article. I wonder what an article like this about Chad Hermansen - the Pirates' equivalent of Dee Brown - would be like.
-P- The Chicago Tribune reports that the Bucs will probably trade Kip Wells.