From FOX's Hot Stove blog: 

The Pittsburgh Pirates have interest in free-agent Ramon Santiago as a potential everyday shortstop in 2012, major-league sources told FOXSports.com.

Santiago maintained a .685 OPS for the Detroit Tigers over the past three seasons while averaging roughly 100 games played per year. He’s regarded as a sure-handed defender at second base and shortstop. The 32-year-old has become immensely popular with his teammates in Detroit because of his leadership and confident, easygoing demeanor.

Nope, not terrible enthused here. Santiago can't hit at all and he's never played more than 85 games in a season at shortstop. His defensive reputation is generally good, but he's also 32. Why you'd drop a reasonably priced Ronny Cedeno for Santiago is kind of beyond me. 

I am super-super busy today so I have to wait a bit before I can give much analysis, but the Pirates have signed Rod Barajas to a one-year deal with a club option for 2013. As far as upgrading the defense behind the plate with a guy that might hit a little, Barajas makes plenty of sense. 

A little bit more: Look, Barajas isn't an exciting signing. I know that and you know that. He's 36 and his offense appears to be tailing, which means that he could be a complete disaster at the plate in 2012. I wrote last week, though, that the Pirates wouldn't (and probably shouldn't) do much more than acqurie a stopgap behind the plate this winter and I think Barajas functions pretty well in that capacity.  

Barajas has scored pretty strongly over the last two years in Matt Klaassen's defensive metrics for catchers (2010, 2011), which makes him a big upgrade over Doumit in that category (it's worth noting that McKenry didn't score strongly behind the plate, either, in 2011). He won't get on base very much (his career OBP is .284), but he managed to hit 16 homers in 98 games for the Dodgers last year and he's hit with reasonable pop in 2010, as well. The chance that he'll fall off the table this year, but honestly, even if that happened he might be an offensive upgrade over McKenry. 

Because he's only signed for one year at $4 million (that's a fair price if you assume he'll be worth something around one win above replacement in 2012, which doesn't seem unreasonable), I don't see any reason that he'd keep Eric Fryer off of the field if Fryer proves that he's capable of being an every day catcher or if Tony Sanchez bounces back and tears the cover off of the ball in Indianapolis this year. Basically, he's a one or two year (his option for 2012 is $3.5 million) insurance policy to keep the Pirates from just writing off the catching position entirely. There's some risk here with his age, but I think there's a decent chance when it's all said and done that his defense will make it so that he's not a huge downgrade over Doumit. 

The bottom line is that the Pirates had to do something about their catching situation this winter and because of Sanchez, they weren't going to do anything dramatic. I think I might've preferred Kelly Shoppach if the Pirates had a chance to sign him, but it's possible that they didn't or that the price was dramatically higher for Shoppach. In any case, Barajas was probably the best realistic free agent option for them behind Shoppach (Ramon Hernandez is Type A, Doumit is likely looking for multiple years, which makes them both unrealistic options), so even if this isn't exactly a World Series clinching move, it doesn't mean that it's a bad one. 

Now that I've run through the various positions that the Pirates need to upgrade this winter and ways they might go about doing so (if you missed the individual pieces: starting pitching, shortstop, catcher, first base), let's take a step back and look at the team as a whole. This is a tall task facing Neal Huntington this winter. The Pirates have problems attracting decent free agents, Huntington may or may not have trouble identifying scrap-heap players that aren't pitchers (it depends on how much of the blame you place on the first problem of convincing free agents to play for the Pirates), and the Pirates have a number of places they need to upgrade. If they can't upgrade all of them, they face making huge downgrades over even the marginal players that they've let go or may let go in the near future. That means that if the Pirates do manage to find, say, a better-than-Ronny-Cedeno shortstop, they may give that upgrade back by playing Mike McKenry and Matt Pagnozzi all year. 

On top of that, the Pirates were awful last year. Much worse than their record indicated. Let's say that they do, in fact, go out and get Chris Capuano and Kelly Shoppach and Clint Barmes and they convince Derrek Lee to come back and Charlie Morton gets healthy and Chris Leroux isn't a terrible starter. Guess what? That team still might stink. At the least, it's a distinct possibility. 

That's why Charlie's dead-on with this post about the Pirates having a near-impossible task this winter. He closes by saying that in order to really get anything done, the Pirates need to be creative this winter, which is something I've been saying that I hope the Pirates will do for a while. The thing about being creative is this, though: creative is almost certain to mean unpopular. 

You know what I think the best way for the Pirates to be creative this winter is? Trading Joel Hanrahan. Huntington's done a great job putting bullpens together the last couple of years and despite what you may hear or read from traditional sources, closers are pretty fungible. How many consistently good closers have really existed in baseball in the last 15 or so years? It's a surprisingly low number. The reality is that a lot of teams over-value closers and there's a really good chance that Hanrahan is at or near the absolute peak of his value. They might be better of leveraging him at the trade deadline for a contending team that really needs a closer or set-up man (the Rangers paid quite a haul for Mike Adams and Koji Uehara both at the deadline this year), but if the Pirates aren't actively shopping Hanrahan this weekend, I'd tell you that the front office isn't doing its job. Trading Hanrahan would probably have an angry mob rush Federal Street with pitchforks, but Hanrahan's trade value is much greater than his actual value to the Pirates and the Pirates don't have many guys like that.

The same goes for pretty much every outfielder above Double-A not named Andrew McCutchen. The Pirates simply won't be able to use Jose Tabata AND Alex Presley AND Gorkys Hernandez AND Starling Marte, nor should they be counting on all of them to become regular contributors. There are significant questions about all of them and they all have individual value at this point. They don't have to trade all of them (or even more than one), of course, but this is where the Pirates have an excess and a chance to cash in on it. Would trading Tabata so close to his extension or Presley on the heels of his breakout or Marte before he even reaches the Majors be popular? Of course not. It'd probably send Pirate fans into a rage. Dealing from strength is something the Pirates are going to have to do at some point, though, because they have a lot of weaknesses and they have quite a few players that could potentially be overvalued by someone else right now. That might not be true in a year.

The Pirates are always going to have to make tough decisions and if they want any hope of 2012 being more than a wasted season, they're going to have to make one or two of those tough decisions this winter. Would the Pirates make a hugely unpopular trade that improves the team so close to actually getting fans back into PNC Park during the summer of 2011? Honestly, I'm worried that they'd be slow to make that decision. I hope I'm wrong.  

Here's a nice interview by Kristy Robinson with Chris Leroux where he talks about his desire to start and the work he's been doing to turn his career around. Since the team he's pitching with in the Dominican is managed by Dean Treanor (the Indianapolis Indians' manager), it seems pretty likely he's starting because the team wants him starting. 

You know what? I'm tired of being negative about this off-season. I still don't think that things are going to play out terribly well for the Pirates this winter, but I also don't think I've done a good job of making it clear that I don't think the Pirates are breaking up the 1927 Yankees again. Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Doumit and Paul Maholm and Garrett Jones (should he be non-tendered) are all replaceable. They're not All-Stars. They might be the best the Pirates can do for 2012, but doesn't just thinking that make you feel dirty? I hope the Pirates can do better. So let's sit down and think of ways Neal Huntington might be able to improve this team this winter, because otherwise, it's going to be an awful and negative off-season.

Of all of the places the Pirates need to find help at this winter, I'm least certain what they're going to do at first base. They could keep Garrett Jones and platoon him with someone like Matt Hague. They could try to sign Derrek Lee or some similar aging free agent. They could flip Pedro Alvarez to first. They could make a small trade. They could make a big trade. They could go scrap-heap diving. 

On one hand, it's easy to say that the Pirates should be able to upgrade this position. Lyle Overbay was terrible at first base for a huge chunk of 2011 and simply letting Jones play against righties and having someone else bat against left-handed starters should fix a large part of the problem. With Alex Presley presumably taking a full-time role in the outfield, it could be an easy way to upgrade two positions at once without doing much. On the other hand, Jones isn't much better than a replacement player at first, his defense there is atrocious, and any platoon parter the Pirates would pair him with would probably be disastrous, be it the unproven Matt Hague or the 2012 version of Matt Diaz.  Having a lot of options doesn't mean they have a lot of good options.

The free agent market doesn't strike me as one that's likely to yield a ton of fruit for the Pirates, either. Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder are the gems, then guys like Michael Cuddyer and Derrek Lee will help fill in the gaps for the teams that don't sign Pujols or Fielder. Beyond that, it's a pretty dicey market. Carlos Pena would make sense for the Pirates, but he'd have to want to sign with the Bucs for that to happen. It's possible he'd be a consolation prize in the Pujols/Fielder derby, as well, which would drive his price out of the Pirates' range. The Pirates could likely outbid the Rays for Casey Kotchman, but that would be gambling on him repeating his career 2011 season. What I'm concerned about here is that they do something like non-tender Jones, then try to replace him with someone clearly past his prime and ready for an Overbay-like season like Russel Branyan. 

If the Pirates were to swing a big trade this winter, it seems to me that first base is probably the place they could find the best upgrade. Beyond the Box Score ran a good primer of potential trade candidates earlier this fall. Logan Morrison may be on his way out in Miami after clashing with the team repeatedly over his constant tweeting and with the front office looking to spend big money to make a splash in their new stadium. There's nowhere for Yonder Alonso to play in Cincinnati unless they deal Joey Votto, but the Reds are likely better suited flipping Alonso for chips to help them contend with Votto (the way the Brewers did with Fielder in 2011). Kendrys Morales (if healthy) and/or Mark Trumbo might be available if the Angels try to make a splash and go after Fielder or Pujols. The Cardinals could try to PA native Matt Adams if they bring Pujols back. The Blue Jays could try and move Adam Lind after another disappointing year in Toronto and maybe a move to the NL would help him. 

The thing to keep in mind when considering a trade is this: it won't be cheap. Would you be willing to part with Alex Presley? Starling Marte? Joel Hanrahan? Zach Von Rosenberg or Colton Cain or Nick Kingham? Tony Sanchez? The Pirates will most certainly have to move some of their young players at some point in the near future, so the pertinent question is whether this hypothetical move is the best use of that young talent. What if the Pirates ship Hanrahan and Marte and Kyle McPherson (again, hypothetical, I don't really know what it would take to get that particular deal done though I suspect the Reds would want an overpay to keep Alonso in the division and I know they need a pitching and a closer with Cordero on the free agent market) to the Reds for Alonso, only to have Pedro Alvarez hit 30 homers in 2012 and give a full-season display of why he can't play third base? Now you have to make another deal, and you've tipped your hand quite a bit. A second trade of Alonso or Alvarez could be necessary at that point, and it might be a tougher trade to make with teams knowing you have to deal one. 

None of this is to say the Pirates shouldn't swing a trade for a first baseman this winter. I think that Pedro Alvarez has created enough doubt that if the Pirates have a chance to make a significant upgrade for a reasonable price (I think this is probably it's own post as to what "reasonable price" is, but obviously guys like Alonso or Morrison would be worth paying quite a bit more for than, say, Lind) at first base that they should consider it, but there are a number of moving pieces here. Should they burn resources for a first baseman when they really need a shortstop and shorstops are, in general, much harder to find? Would they be better off taking a risk than paying through the nose for a more sure thing? These aren't easy questions to answer, but they're the questions facing the Pirates at first base this winter.

Via Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus (who's 4,000 word summary of what you're about to see is must-read), I give you: Yoenis Cespedes, The Showcase. You can thank me later. (Note: there's some NSFW audio in the form of background music.)

Just a reminder that Gerrit Cole is starting the Arizona Fall League Rising Stars Game tonight for the East team and will presumably only be pitching the first inning. Robbie Grossman is leading off for the East. First pitch is at 8:10 and this is probably the best (only) chance to see these guys live before Spring Training. 

You know what? I'm tired of being negative about this off-season. I still don't think that things are going to play out terribly well for the Pirates this winter, but I also don't think I've done a good job of making it clear that I don't think the Pirates are breaking up the 1927 Yankees again. Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Doumit and Paul Maholm and Garrett Jones (should he be non-tendered) are all replaceable. They're not All-Stars. They might be the best the Pirates can do for 2012, but doesn't just thinking that make you feel dirty? I hope the Pirates can do better. So let's sit down and think of ways Neal Huntington might be able to improve this team this winter, because otherwise, it's going to be an awful and negative off-season.

Here's reality: Mike McKenry and Matt Pagnozzi are probably going to be the Pirates' starting catching platoon in April 2012 and even if the Pirates can upgrade on that duo, it'll like be marginal. The Bucs will offer Ryan Doumit arbitration and he'll turn it down to go be a catcher/DH in the American League. They won't offer Chris Snyder arbitration because they're rightly afraid of his bad back forcing him to accept, then only play 30 games again 2012. They won't make a serious trade for a catcher because Tony Sanchez isn't all that far away from the Majors and despite his terrible 2011, they can't be ready to give up on him yet. They won't sign Ramon Hernandez, because they won't give up a second round pick to sign a soon-to-be 36 year old catcher that never topped 352 plate appearances in his three years with the Reds to a one-year deal. 

There's been some talk of the Pirates trading with the Yankees for Francisco Cervelli, but ... I dunno. I just don't think that Cervelli provides a big enough upgrade on what they have to justify giving up much of anything for him. He'd probably be better than McKenry and Pagnozzi, but not hugely so and if the Yankees want anything other than an organizational minor leaguer with maybe a hint of upside, I'm not sure it's worth it.  

The Pirates could also look to the free agent market beyond Hernandez, of course, but it's a pretty thin market this winter. Rod Barajas can still thump the ball a little bit (17 homers in 339 plate appearances with the Mets and Dodgers last year) and his defense probably isn't bad, but he's also 36 and he's not getting younger and he'll likely give you an OBP below .300. They'll almost certainly be interested in Kelly Shoppach, who the Rays just let loose by declining his option. Shoppach, you may recall, was supposed to be part of the legendary "Jason Bay for Cliff Lee" trade that never happened and maybe was discussed and maybe was as real as Bigfoot. That means he's from the Indians and he did overlap with Neal Huntington just a bit after he was traded from Boston in January 2006. He used to be a pretty good prospect (Baseball America's #74 in 2004) and he had a pretty good year with the Tribe in 2008, hitting .261/.348/.517 with 21 homers in 403 PAs, but he's fallen off of a table since then. He can't hit right-handed pitching at all, which is a problem since, you know, most pitchers are right-handed. He is, however, a strong defensive catcher according to Matt Klaasen's rankings at Beyond the Box Score. You can't say that about anyone that played catcher for the Pirates last year, not even Mike McKenry (the Fort scored about eight runs worse than Shoppach in a similar amount of playing time). 

So Shoppach might be worth a look, if only to shore up the defense behind the plate and to split time with McKenry, taking all of the starts against lefties and some of the starts against righties and maybe giving the Pirates some pop behind the plate. It wouldn't be ideal, but it woud be a short-term solution until Sanchez is ready if you're the sort of person that thinks that Sanchez will ever be ready. I'm not really sure about Sancehz at this point, personally, but given his huge weight-loss in 2010 I'm willing to give him a shot to play out of his funk in 2012 before writing him off entirely.  

The other option is the internal one: let Eric Fryer battle it out with Pagnozzi and McKenry. He's got a very strong defensive reputation and he can get himself on base pretty well. He didn't hit with much pop in Indianapolis after his demotion last year but he's generally shown some in the past. He's really, really hard to get a read on because of glacial ascent through the Brewers, Yankees, and Pirates systems, but he's definitely shown flashes of being able to hit here and there and, as mentioned, he might be a better defensive option than McKenry or Pagnozzi. At the very least, giving up an extended shot early in the year in Pittsburgh will give the Pirates an idea of if he's a viable backup or a real option if Sanchez doesn't come around or if he's nothing at all. In other words, I'm sure that McKenry and Pagnozzi will be bad, but I'm less sure that Fryer will be so. 

The bottom line is this: the Pirates can't replace Ryan Doumit's bat behind the plate this year and with Sanchez (plus Ramon Cabrera and Carlos Paulino behind him) they're unlikely to look for anything other than a stopgap. With the benefit of an entire winter, they can probably find a stopgap better than the one they found in the middle of the season last year (McKenry), but hoping for a lot more isn't likely. Maybe they best they can do for now is to find a guy with either a little bit of on base ability or a little bit of pop that will shore the position up defensively. At the very least that would offset the loss of Doumit's bat a little bit, because he's generally accepted to be one of the worst defensive catchers in the league. 

You know what? I'm tired of being negative about this off-season. I still don't think that things are going to play out terribly well for the Pirates this winter, but I also don't think I've done a good job of making it clear that I don't think the Pirates are breaking up the 1927 Yankees again. Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Doumit and Paul Maholm and Garrett Jones (should he be non-tendered) are all replaceable. They're not All-Stars. They might be the best the Pirates can do for 2012, but doesn't just thinking that make you feel dirty? I hope the Pirates can do better. So let's sit down and think of ways Neal Huntington might be able to improve this team this winter, because otherwise, it's going to be an awful and negative off-season.

Finding a good shortstop is hard, which is why I think letting Ronny Cedeno go is awfully hard to understand. Cedeno's not necessarily a good shortstop, mind you, but he played very strong defense at short on a team that was better at getting ground balls than strikeouts. His value to the team was particularly driven home when he was hurt and Chase d'Arnaud played short. d'Arnaud was just as bad at the plate as Cedeno and worse in the field and it was noticeable. 

So what happens now that the Pirates have let Cedeno walk? The internal options aren't all that great in 2012. I'm not sure what d'Arnaud will ever be capable of as a big league shortstop. His glove isn't all that great and while his bat may come around some, I don't know that it'll be enough. Jordy Mercer's glove is a bit better and he showed some pop in Double and Triple-A last year, but he's got serious OBP problems and only 250 PAs above Double-A to boot. Pedro Ciriaco probably hits worse than either of them and while he's got a decent defensive reputation, I'm not sure it's enough. If I were ranking the three right now, I'd go Mercer/d'Arnaud/Ciriaco and I'd probably let Mercer and d'Arnaud battle it out for the spot in spring training, but it'd be best if it didn't come to that. So what are the club's other options?

The free agent market is not good. If you go to Fangraphs and sort 2011's shortstops with 450+ PAs by WAR, you won't see many names below Ronny Cedeno. The names you will see below Cedeno, you'll also see on the free agent list: Alex Gonzalez, Yuniesky Betancourt, Orlando Cabrera. All three of those guys would probably play for the Pirates if the price was right. They shouldn't. But who else is there on the list? John McDonald? Jamey Carroll? Ramon Santiago? Pass, pass, pass. Rafael Furcal's play improved a bit once he was traded to the Cardinals, but there's a good chance his defense will be atrocious. Cesar Izturis might work as a cheaper Ronny Cedeno replacement as his glovework is very, very good, but his bat is just terrible. Really, there's not much to find here on the free agent market for the Pirates, because they're not signing Jose Reyes and they'd be insane to try and sign Jimmy Rollins given his demands and his declining skillset. 

The best option for the Pirates might be, ulp, Nick Punto. He's a strong fielder at short according to DRS and a heck of a fielder according to UZR and while I wouldn't expect him to match his offensive output from 2011 again, he can at least take the occasional walk. I can pretty much promise you that if you're sabermetrically inclined at all that John Wehner and Bob Walk and Greg Brown's love for Punto will fill your eyes with blood and your heart with rage by the end of 2012. If the Pirates sign Nick Punto and somehow finish about .500 or get to the playoffs, he will be second behind Clint Hurdle in terms of receiving undeserved praise for the accomplishment and you will straight up want to commit a felony to make it stop. But that thing I said about decent shorstops being hard to find isn't less true just because people overavlue the short, "scrappy" guy. 

Edited to add: Clint Barmes kind of fits this same role as Punto -- a guy who's glove grades really well at short in one advanced metric (DRS) and decent in another (UZR) and who can't really hit but might sort of fake his way through it a bit (actually, he's more likely to do that than Punto is). I'd forgotten the Astros moved him back to short after the Rockies had him at second in the Tulo era, but he's definitely a free agent option. Thanks to @pghiconoclast for reminding me to mention him.

Where shorstop is different from starting pitching or catching, though, is that the Pirates don't have a whole heck of a lot in the way of minor league talent at the position and so a trade might be worth pursuing. Beyond the Box Score had a good look at the position just a couple of weeks ago, which I'm using for a starting point here.  Jed Lowrie always comes up because he's squeezed between Marco Scutaro, who the Red Sox are bringing back in 2012, and Jose Iglesias (actually, he might be a trade target himself since he can't hit but has a great glove). There's not really any guarantee Lowrie can hit, though, because he's 27 and he hasn't really done it in the big leagues over an extended period yet. He's also quite injury prone. Still, if the Red Sox lose Papelbon, maybe the Pirates could swing a Hanrahan for Lowrie trade (I'm spitballing here, Ben Cherington is a smart guy by all accounts, which means he probably won't overvalue closers or undervalue shortstops) or something along those lines. 

Another place to possibly look for shortstops would be Cleveland. SHOCKING NEWS, I know. But there's not a whole ton of room for Luis Valbuena there and over parts of five seasons in Triple-A he's hit .304/.387/.468 and though his big league performance record is spotty, he's only got 806 PAs in four partial seasons at the big league level and he won't be 26 until the end of the month, which means that there's some room for improvement. It looks like he was primarily a second baseman in the minors, so I'm not sure how good his defense is and I'm not sure I'd give up a whole ton in a trade for him, but then he might not be as expensive in a trade as someone with a better reputation (like Lowrie) or a legitimate shortstop (like Iglesias). There is a decent chance he'd be an upgrade over what the Pirates have on the team and in the system, though, and that makes him worth considering.

At the end of the day, though, I'm guessing the Pirates want to take one more year to evaluate Mercer and d'Arnaud and Brock Holt before giving up on them entirely, which makes a trade less likely and John Perrotto's guess from yesterday, that the Pirates will sign a short-term stopgap and go from there, more likely. Then again, if that's what they wanted to do, why wouldn't they just keep Cedeno? 

You know what? I'm tired of being negative about this off-season. I still don't think that things are going to play out terribly well for the Pirates this winter, but I also don't think I've done a good job of making it clear that I don't think the Pirates are breaking up the 1927 Yankees again. Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Doumit and Paul Maholm and Garrett Jones (should he be non-tendered) are all replaceable. They're not All-Stars. They might be the best the Pirates can do for 2012, but doesn't just thinking that make you feel dirty? I hope the Pirates can do better. So let's sit down and think of ways Neal Huntington might be able to improve this team this winter, because otherwise, it's going to be an awful and negative off-season. 

Right now, the Pirates have two decent starters (Morton, McDonald) and three guys that can start but that shouldn't be relied on (Correia, Lincoln, Karstens). If they can find two starters this winter better than the bottom three guys, their rotation gets quite a bit stronger and it has some real depth in the case of something like Morton being slow to recover from his hip injury. So where will two starters come from?

David Todd has been beating the "Chris Leroux for the rotation" drum for quite a while and I'll admit that I was skeptical of the idea at first, but I'm slowly warming up to it. When Leroux was a freshman at Winthrop in 2003, he was a catcher, but he converted to the other terminal of the battery over his career there and the Marlins drafted him as a pitcher in 2005. He didn't pitch in 2006, though, because of Tommy John surgery and the Marlins moved him to the bullpen pretty quickly and he stayed there as he struggled with control since. The Pirates seemed to fix his control problems this year, though, and he's become a pretty extreme groundballer to boot (after his rough start in Altoona, he only gave up one homer in 86 innings between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh). He hasn't started much, but then he hasn't pitched much at all, either. He is starting in the Domincan Republic this winter, which should get him stretched out a bit. I'm not at all sure that he'd be able to make the transition to the rotation, but when you're looking at giving innings to Kevin Correia and Brad Lincoln and Jeff Karstens may be one of your best starters, it wouldn't hurt to give him a chance in spring training and see what he does with it. 

The Bucs don't have many internal options that are immediately better than Leroux (I'd say the jury's out on Owens and Locke for now until they can prove themselves a bit more at Triple-A), so they'll almost certainly look outside for rotation help, too. I don't think they'll pull a trade for a pitcher because of the pitching they have in the organization, so they'll likely look to the free agent market. A lot of people have already connected them with Jeff Francis. Francis wouldn't be a terrible fit (he pitched quite a bit better than his 4.82 ERA with the Royals last year), but given his past shoulder struggles his dip in velocity (his fastball dropped from 87.2 to 84.7 in 2011) worries me a bit. Still, he'd be a decent Paul Maholm analog that would at the very least add some depth. 

It's possible that they might be able to lure someone like Erik Bedard to Pittsburgh on a decent-sized one-year deal to prove that he's healthy and can handle a full season's worth of work. Rich Harden and Brandon Webb (who the Pirates were interested in last year) are similar possibilities. Harden made 15 starts in Oakland last year and his strikeout numbers were pretty much in line with his career rates, but he got rocked pretty badly (17 homers in 82 2/3 innings). Plus, he's Rich Harden. The chances he's actually healthy are probably small. Webb was supposed to be ready to pitch in 2011, but he only made four starts in Double-A for Texas and he wasn't overwhelmingly impressive in those starts. You can put Chris Capuano into this category, too, as he put up some strong peripherals with the Mets, but gave up some homers and had a pretty high ERA that might scare other teams off. Since lefties tend to pitch well at PNC Park, he could make a nice fit. Dontrelle Willis could fit here, too, as he showed some flashes of his former self in Cincinnati this past year, even though his final numbers weren't great. The problem here is that the guys most likely to be good in 2012 (Bedard, Capuano) are the guys who aren't very likely to pitch for the Pirates at all, save an awful market that leaves them looking for teams in late January or early February. The guys that might pitch for the Pirates (Webb, Willis) are more likely to be disasters.

There's a good chance the Pirates will go after Edwin Jackson, but the guy's only 28 and his agent is Scott Boras. He's going to want a commitment beyond what the Pirates are willing to make. That puts him in the Jorge de la Rosa category from last winter: he's a good pitcher and he'd help the Pirates a lot and whatever they pay him probably won't kill their budget in 2012, but when he's 33 and making $15 million and the Pirates need that money to, say, pick up Andrew McCutchen's option, we're going to look on that sort of deal a lot less favorably because he's not good enough to justify that. 

There are also some dangerous categories of free agent pitchers for the Pirates this winter. There's the "Semi Old Guy Who Just Had a Strong Bounceback year" group with pitchers Freddy Garcia and Aaron Harang. Harang's peripherals didn't budge from 2010 to 2011, but he moved from Cincinnati to San Diego. Remember that a 3.64 ERA in Petco Park results in an ERA+ of below 100. Garcia had a pretty good year with the Yankees. Guys like that worry me, because there's a chance you'll end up in a bidding war with someone that overvalues their bounceback (or that you'll be the team that does it). There are guys like Jon Garland, who've had some success in the past but who are probably past their prime and will likely be awful in the wrong circumstances. 

Basically, I think the Pirates are going to have to both open their checkbooks and take a risk to improve their pitching staff in 2012. The outside guys they should be focusing on are high-risk/high-reward pitchers that have injury histories, that need a chance to prove themselves and their health to the world. The Pirates could absolutely get burned by this method, but it's the only one that really offers them a chance to upgrade their rotation. This is where Leroux being a capable starter would be a huge boon for the team, because then they'd only really have to add one of this sort of guy or because they could roll the dice on a couple of them and not get burned too badly (other than financial) if one doesn't pan out.

What's scary here is the variability. If Morton gets healthy quickly and Leroux does a solid Morton impression as a starter and the Pirates can convince one decent free agent to pitch for them and that free agent stays healthy and pitches well, a McDonald/Capuano/Morton/Leroux/Karstens (or Lincoln) rotation actually could be a solid sleeper rotation that would give the team a chance to win most nights of the week. If Morton can't get healthy and Leroux can't handle starting and they have to dig deep into the free agent barrel for a pitcher, McDonald/Harang/Lincoln/Karstens/Correia would be an abject disaster of a rotation that probably portends another 100-loss season.

Reality always falls somewhere in between, but upgrading the rotation is the single biggest thing the Pirates can do this winter to make the team better in 2012, besides pulling off some kind of blockbuster trade. Let's hope Neal Huntington plays his cards right.