Pirates spring training notes

I've been at Pirate City the last three mornings.  Those happen to have been the last three days there for the major league team, which moves to McKechnie Field tomorrow, starting with the Black and Gold Game.  I don't have anything terribly informative to report.  What news there is, you've undoubtedly seen, mainly in the form of the Gerrit Cole situation, which I find as interesting as watching snow melt.

For the most part, the team at least seems pretty healthy now.  (Knock on wood, please.)  The two problems they have are with Cory Luebke, who has a hammy, and the mysterious Robert Zarate, who may have an elbow problem the nature of which is TBD.  With Kyle Lobstein being stretched out to start, that leaves Eric O'Flaherty as probably the only left-handed option for the bullpen.  On the plus side, John Holdzkom appears to be fully healthy right now and is scheduled to pitch tomorrow.  Having Holdzkom and Arquimedes Caminero pitching in the middle innings would be fun, if you weren't facing them.

Of course, there are the guys who came in with known issues, mainly Jung-Ho Kang, Nick Kingham and Jesse Biddle.  If batting practice is any indication, Kang's power hasn't gone anywhere.  He parked a couple blasts well up on the roof over the batting cages, which are beyond LF on one of the fields.  Biddle is supposed to starting throwing in about a week.  I haven't heard anything about Kingham.  Apart from all that, the only injury issue I know of is Antoan Richardson, who's slightly limited as he's recovering from a broken foot.

I've mostly seen infield drills.  There are two groups, which probably got decided based on experience.  One group is kinda first-baseman-heavy.  Kevin Young has been working a lot with John Jaso, Mike Morse, Jason Rogers and Jake Goebbert.  Of the four, Goebbert -- who's more athletic than I expected -- looks about the best, but it's just drills.  Rogers worked out at first for the first two days, but took grounders at third today.  Morse took grounders at third yesterday, but said he was just getting ready for emergency situations.  The rest of this group is Kang, Josh Harrison, Jordy Mercer, Sean Rodriguez and Cole Figueroa (pictured).

The other group is Josh Bell, Dan Gamache, Alen Hanson, Adam Frazier, Max Moroff, Juan Diaz (a minor league free agent signed as depth), and usually Gift Ngoepe and Pedro Florimon, although they've both been with the other group a little.  These guys move around every day.  Only Hanson, who's stayed at second, and of course Bell, have stayed in one spot.  I've seen Frazier at second and short; Ngoepe at second, short and third; Gamache at first, second and third; and Moroff and Diaz at short and third.  Diaz is 6'4" and not thin, so he looks a bit weird at short.

I haven't seen a lot of BP.  I did see Bell hit a couple blasts onto the next field today, batting left-handed of course.  He seems to be turning on the ball a lot more; he didn't used to do it much even in BP.  When I've watched Jaso, he's hit everything on a line.