Notes: Pirates approaching deadline to exchange salary figures with Gerrit Cole, Tony Watson, others

A couple notes for Thursday:

• As Rob Biertempfel notes, the deadline for players and teams to exchange arbitration figures is tomorrow at 1:00. The Pirates have six arbitration-eligible players left (with salary projections via Matt Swartz of MLBTR): Tony Watson ($5.9 million), Juan Nicasio ($4.6 million), Gerrit Cole ($4.2 million, although Swartz thinks Cole will actually get a bit less than his model projects), Jordy Mercer ($4 million), Jared Hughes ($2.5 million) and Drew Hutchison ($2.2 million). We could see some of those players settle prior to the deadline.
• If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs’ list of the Pirates’ top 21 prospects. In particular, note his writeup on Tyler Glasnow, in which he says Glasnow is more likely to be a reliever (albeit a really good one) than a top-tier starter. Also scroll to the bottom and check out the comps for various players — Austin Meadows gets Vernon Wells and Josh Bell gets Tino Martinez, both of which I’d take.