/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53165109/602237188.0.jpg)
A few notes for Thursday:
- A Korean court has set a February 22 trial date for Jung Ho Kang. That’s several days after the start of Pirates Spring Training. Kang could ask to have the trial postponed, although Rob Biertempfel writes that the Pirates likely prefer to get this over with. I’m ... really sick of coming up with the SB Nation-standard 150 words about this topic, so I’m just going to dump it here.
- Less unpleasantly, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs really likes Felipe Rivero, suggesting he’s potentially even better than his surface numbers. Sullivan writes that Rivero had a whole bunch of taken strikes called balls last year, and points to a somewhat recent change in Rivero’s delivery in which he switched from falling toward first base to keeping his right leg perpendicular to the ground.
- Thanks, everyone, for your FanPost responses to the question of how many games the Pirates will win this year. Here they are: Below The Mendoza Line, Tooele Dave, ChiBurgh, PatHat, Grumbly, 2010 Will Be The Year, IAPHDBuccosFan, BattlingBucs, JRoth, IAPiratesFan, BuccoFan21, NastyNate82, ajl022, mpowerOR, bucsws2014 and DGLewis.