The Pirates have cut Robinzon Diaz, Justin Thomas and Jeff Karstens from the 40-man roster, added Brad Lincoln, Gorkys Hernandez, Bryan Morris and Ramon Aguero, and claimed reliever Chris Jakubauskas from the Mariners.
Thomas and Karstens aren't huge surprises--Thomas was claimed from the M's only a couple weeks ago, and Karstens was arbitration-eligible--but I'm a surprised by Diaz being cut. He was a perfectly functional backup catcher for chunks of last year, and functional backup catchers are valuable. If one looks at the entirety of his performance record, though, it's not that impressive--he actually hit worse at AAA last year than he did in the majors. So I suppose there's a case to be made that he wouldn't continue to be productive with the Pirates if he stuck with them. If Diaz is lost and Ryan Doumit is traded, the Bucs will have to hunt around for another catcher. This could be a sign that the Pirates are taking Jeff Clement seriously as a catcher, although it also might have nothing to do with that at all.
Jakubauskas doesn't have much of a performance record and he's already 30, but he has a great curveball and he held his own in the American League last year, albeit with a really low strikeout rate, and the sort of flyball tendency that plays better in Safeco than anywhere else but San Diego.