Pittsburgh Lumber Co.

The Pirates optioned Tom Gorzelanny and Jose Tabata to minor league camp today. It is surprising to see Gorzelanny demoted so early, as I expected he would end up as the team’s fifth starter. I assumed Jeff Karstens would be the odd man out of the rotation, but he looks like the most likely candidate [...]

Brian from Raise the Jolly Roger is looking into setting up some live blogs during the upcoming season, and we are going to test things out during tonight’s televised game. Things should start up around game time.
<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=c5daf00d2a” >Rays vs. Pirates</a>

2009 Spring Training

Pedro Alvarez

.444/.500/.778

Andrew McCutchen

.250/.377/.477

Jose Tabata

.444/.560/.611

 
That is all.

The Pirates signed Craig Monroe to a minor league deal on January 13. A few hours later, Wilbur Miller had this to say about Monroe on the Only Bucs message board:

[T]here should be zero chance of him making the major league roster. I don’t care if he hits .990 in spring training, because he [...]

Just a quick graphical comparison between the Pirates’ defense on opening day 2008 and opening day 2009. I used 2008 UZR per 150 games, courtesy of Fangraphs. Keep in mind that there are some sample size issues with these numbers. Many players will be receiving their first opportunity to start regularly this season, and played [...]

The Pirates sent Romulo Sanchez to minor league camp today, along with Pedro Lopez, Miguel Perez and Daniel Haigwood. It certainly seems as if the Pirates were unhappy with Romulo, and were attempting to make a statement by optioning him. Said Neal Huntington:

He’s got a lot of delivery work to do, and we felt [...]

Here is a pretty interesting ESPN segment on Pirate prospect Mpho Ngoepe, who the team signed out of South Africa over the offseason. He is playing for South Africa in the World Baseball Classic if you have a chance to catch any of their games. They played today, but I was not able [...]

Pirates SS/2B prospect Jarek Cunningham will have knee surgery due to a torn ACL and will miss the entire 2009 season. This is not a new injury for Cunningham. Here is an excerpt from Baseball America’s 2009 Prospect Handbook:

Cunningham missed his senior high school season in 2008 because of a knee injury, which [...]

Inspired by the folks over at Beyond the Box Score, I thought I would throw up a graph today. Using the numbers at Fangraphs, here are the win values by season for five Pirate starters who have been in the majors for at least a few years now. These numbers include both offense and defense, [...]