-P- ESPN's Jorge Arangure estimates that there's a 90% chance the Pirates sign Miguel Sano once his age investigation is complete. According to some of Arangure's other writing, the other two teams who were in on Sano, Baltimore and Minnesota, appear to have backed out of the race.
-P- Rinku Singh picked up his first pro win yesterday. Offensively for Bradenton, Gift Ngoepe and Wesley Freeman continue to hit well.
-P- The Nationals have fired Manny Acta, one of the game's more creative and interesting managers. The practice of firing managers in order to make them fall guys for much larger organizational problems is a cowardly one. It wasn't Manny Acta's fault the Nats are the worst team in baseball this year, just as the Pirates' continued failures weren't primarily Lloyd McClendon's fault when Dave Littlefield fired him. McClendon was far from perfect, but that's not the point.
-P- Remember when it looked like Dayton Moore was going to be a good GM? Now, not so much:
"The defensive statistics - I still really don't understand how some of those statistics are evaluated, I really don't. When you watch baseball games every single day, its very apparent who can play defensively and who can't."
"Now pardon me while I admire Yuniesky Betancourt's defense." I know defensive stats still leave a lot of questions unanswered, but there's really no excuse for an MLB GM who doesn't understand them or doesn't use them.