Kevin Goldstein's Top 11 Pirate prospects is posted today over at Baseball Prospectus, so as always it's interesting to check it out and see what outside minds have to say about the Pirates' system. Much of the article is under the paywall, though the rankings themselves are free. Goldstein gives the Pirates four five-star prospects this year, plus Starling Marte and Robbie Grossman as four-star prospects. You can check back through Goldstein's past rankings of the Pirates' system to see that the Pirates haven't had a collection of good talent like this in a long time, though Goldstein still expresses some reservations about depth. 

It's also interesting to see how he penalized Tony Sancehz and Stetson Allie for their difficult seasons. I personally have a harder time figuring out how to rank highly-regarded guys after a bad season, so seeing how others do is something I try to keep an eye on. In any case, make sure to check out the whole thing, especially if you have a BP subscription. 

And this seems like as good a time as any to mention that Pirates Prospects is taking pre-orders for their 2012 prospect guide, which should be shipping soon. Last year's guide was pretty much indespensible and I'm sure this year's will be, too. 

At the Winter Meetings, David Laurila at FanGraphs spoke to Clint Hurdle and Hurdle's got some interesting things to say about Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Neil Walker, Jose Tabata, and how the hitters and coaches prepare for opponents. It's worth reading enough that I'll only snark on his comment about Neil Walker being an RBI hunter this one time. 

But seriously, read it all. For as much crap as Hurdle gets from guys like me, it's apparent from this article that he knows quite a bit about hitting and has put a lot of thought into how his young players approach their at-bats, even if the club's young offense didn't bear much fruit in 2011.

Patrick Newbman of NPB Tracker (via MLB Trade Rumors) says that the Pirates have signed Ryota Igarashi to a "split contract," which I think means a minor league deal that would pay him differently if he makes the big league club (think Jose Veras last year). Igarashi's worked 69 innings out of the Mets' bullpen over the last two seasons and before that was a reliever with Yakult in NPB's Pacific League.

He doesn't have much to show for his time with the Mets, but he throws pretty hard (his fastball averages around 92-94) and his strikeout numbers with the Mets were (67 in 69 innings). He struggled with his control in New York quite a bit, which really hurt his overall numbers, but that seems like something maybe the Pirates can help him with. Certainly it won't hurt to have another potential bullpen arm in camp. 

And of course, you can probably guess that I like the signing because I think the Pirates need to be branching out into the Far East market more and while Igarashi isn't a star by any means, he is another Japanese player they can put on the roster to help towards making the Pirates a more viable destination for Japanese players. Hopefully, this will work out better than the Akinori Iwamura experience. 

It's a bit of a slow news day, but Jon Heyman tweeted last night that the Pirates are still interested in Derrek Lee, with the implication being that the acquisition of Casey McGehee and tender of Garrett Jones would not keep the Pirates from re-signing Lee, should he be interested. 

That's a relatively innocuous tweet, but from it I think we can make a couple of decent conclusions. One is that the Pirates are not terribly confident in Garrett Jones as an every day first baseman. That makes sense, both because of his glove and his limited bat there. I don't know that Lee would add a whole lot at this point (see: this post) and now that they have Casey McGehee and Yamaico Navarro and even Nick Evans I really don't see why the club would still be interested in Lee, since I think that he really adds depth more than anything and the Pirates have quite a bit more first base depth than they did when the off-season began. 

The other thing that this means is that the Pirates are still planning on spending a bit more money. Which means that I hope they spend it on a starting pitcher, and not Derrek Lee. It's good to know that Neal Huntington may have more on his shopping list before spring training starts, though. 

Casey McGehee is a Brewer. We have always hated Casey McGehee. Casey McGehee is a Pirate. We have always loved Casey McGehee. 

When the Pirates picked up Casey McGehee last night, my initial instinct was to remember that how awful he was in 2011 and how overrated I thought he was in 2010. Being overrated doesn't mean that a player isn't useful, of course (see: Neil Walker), which is something that I have to remind myself pretty regularly. The second that I remembered that, I stopped asking why the Pirates would want McGehee -- it's obvious why they'd want a guy that was a 3-win player in 2010 in exchange for a reliever they were otherwise going to non-tender -- and shifted to what the Pirates might be seeing in a guy that was just as bad as Pedro Alvarez at the plate last year. 

Most Twitter conversation (mostly between James and Ed) last night centered on his very low BABIP in 2011 (.249 vs. .330 and .306 in 2009 and 2010, respectively) and his low HR/FB rate (8.6% vs. 13.6% and 12.5%), two things that could suggest that a hitter is getting unlucky. That's a start, but it seemed to me at that point that it wasn't a huge amount to go on given that McGehee does strike out quite a bit (almost a quarter of his plate appearances are either strikeouts or walks [career 16.6% K rate and 7.6% BB rate], which means fewer balls in play, which means a low BABIP would have less of an effect) and that he's moving to PNC Park, which tends to swallow right-handed hitters homers. Which is to say that yes, McGehee did get a bit unlucky in 2011, but based on those numbers alone I'm not sure that a better BABIP would help him out a whole ton, especially because PNC Park won't do his power any favors. 

So I woke up this morning still pondering the question until I saw this tweet from ESPN's Christina Kahrl about McGehee's bad year against lefties in 2011. I figured I'd follow up on that a bit and there's definitely something there. In McGehee's breakout 2009 season, he hit .303/.404/.461 against lefties, though he mostly played against righties (290 PAs vs. 104). In 2010, his first full year, he hit .316/.358/.589 against lefties. Eight of his 23 homers  came against left-handed hitters, despite only a quarter of his PAs being against lefties. In 2011, McGehee hit .169/.228/.185 against lefties. So, all indications before 2011 were that he was a fairly typical right-handed hitter and then suddenly, he completely bottomed out against lefties.

Was it because he hurt his thumb early in the year? Or because some mystical cosmic force feasted on his ability to hit lefties to fuel its undying hunger? Was he just weirdly unlucky early in the year and let that fester into something worse? If you dig a little deeper, you can see that almost all of his BABIP and HR/FB problems stem from left-handed pitchers, even though his line drive rates and strikeout rates and flyball and groundball rates all seem to be in line with what he did against righties. That's not as good as he was in the past, but it still suggests he was hugely unlucky against left-handed pitching in 2011. I don't know if McGehee will get back to his 2009/2010 rates against lefties, but I do know I'd be incredibly surprised if he put up a .413 OPS against southpaws again 2012. If he improves there, he'll be a much better player for the Pirates than he was for the Brewers last year. 

With the midnight non-tender deadline fast approaching, I'll update this post through the night as we figure out who the Pirates do and don't offer contracts to. We already know that Jose Veras has been traded to the Brewers for Casey McGehee, who will presumably be tendered.

We also know that the Pirates signed Jason Grilli to a one-year/$1.1 million deal. Grilli, you'll recall, was pretty excellent for the Pirates after the Phillies were forced to release him in July when they didn't promote him to the Majors. He was recovering from a knee injury that forced him to miss all of 2010. Assuming Grilli stays healthy (he's 35 now, so this is a bit of a concern), getting a reliever that can strike out more than a hitter an inning for $1.1 million is a pretty solid deal for the Pirates. 

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: Everyone got a contract offer, with everyone being Joel Hanrahan, Garrett Jones, Chris Resop, Charlie Morton, Evan Meek, and Jeff Karstens. This is what I was hoping for, of course, though Neal Huntington's comments early in the off-season put some doubt on a Jones tender. The Pirates are better off with all of these guys on the roster, though, especially with Veras headed to Milwaukee. 

With tonight being the deadline to tender arbitration-eligible players contracts, the Pirates and Brewers have swapped Jose Veras and Casey McGehee, two guys who seemed like likely non-tenders before midnight (it was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Tom Haudricourt, but it's been quickly confirmed by the teams). 

It's ... an interesting swap, to say the least. Veras was simply going to be the odd man out in a Pirate bullpen full of right-handed options with the emergence of guys like Chris Leroux and Jared Hughes and maybe even Bryan Morris last year. The Pirates seem intent on tendering contracts to Jason Grilli and Chris Resop before midnight tonight, so paying Veras was something they probably weren't going to do. 

McGehee took forever to slog his way through the Cubs' system without ever really impressing anyone, then was claimed by the Brewers off of waivers after the 2008 season. He exploded in Milwaukee in 2009, hitting .301/.360/.499 with 16 homers in 394 PAs. He followed that up in 2010 with a .285/.337/.464 line. He hit 23 homers and drove in 104 runs, which won him the "Brewers MVP" award, even though his triple-slash line left quite a bit to be desired. He then completely tanked in 2011, hitting .223/.280/.346. You will likely hear people make something of his 63 RBIs, as if being able to drive in runs with guys like Braun and Fielder and Weeks and Hart hitting in front of him makes him a good hitter, but you should ignore those things because McGehee was miserable in 2011. 

That said, this seems like a decent risk to be taking, especially since they were about three hours away from getting nothing at all for Veras's beautiful curveball. McGehee has at least hit a little bit in recent history and he gives the Pirates quite a bit of flexibility in the infield. He can play third if Pedro Alvarez tanks again, he can play third if Pedro Alvarez hits well and can't play defense, he can function as an acceptable utility guy that we know has hit in the Majors in the past, unlike Josh Harrison and Yamaico Navarro, he could probably play first base if it came down to it. 

All of this presupposes that he'll bounce back at least a little in 2012, which isn't a given, but I suppose getting a guy that's under 30 (McGehee turned 29 in October) with a bit of upside is better than nothing at all.  

Umm, wow. Holy crap. I don't even know what to say. The NL Central is gonna look awfully different pre-June in 2012. 

One of my all-time favorite Partial Season Pirates, Octavio Dotel, signed with the Detroit Tigers today. That gives him an MLB-record 13 career teams and since he seems to be happy about it, I'm happy for him. I'm so happy for that I made a Sporcle quiz honoring his achievment and wrote a longer post about it over at the Outside Corner. 

I'm not sure if I actually care about this, or if I'm really bored on Friday afternoon.  

In one of the more personally amusing incidences of online post-scheduling this winter, I wrote a preview of the Pirates' off-season for The Hardball Times that went live on Wednesday morning, hours before the club finalized a contract with Nate McLouth, signed Erik Bedard, and traded for Yamaico Navarro. These sorts of things are unavoidable, of course, but it's quite amusing to be because in re-reading the entire piece this morning, I'm not entirely sure if it makes me come off as prescient or short-sighted. 

That's because I spend the bulk of the article more or less bemoaning the Barmes and Barajas signings and worrying that the Pirates will plug their remaining holes at first base and in the rotation in similar, lateral fashion, but then close with this:

Pittsburgh won 72 games in 2011 and entered the offseason with a ton of holes to fill after declining Maholm's, Doumit's and Cedeno’s options. They’ve worked on remaking the roster, but Barajas and Barmes are hardly the players who are going to transform the Pirates into contenders. They still have work to do, especially in the rotation, and they have both the payroll flexibility to add free agents and some assets to trade, depending on the route they want to go.

Most likely, though, the Pirates are simply working this winter to provide a decent framework in hopes that the young players who failed to step forward in 2011 finally do so in 2012 ...

It's easy to get caught up in the The Pirates were a 65-win team masquerading as a 72-win team and they dropped Maholm and Doumit and Cedeno and if they don't get X WAR from their catcher and X WAR from their shortstop and X WAR from their pitching acquisitions and X WAR from first base, they'll be lucky to be a 70-win team again and man, those wins aren't coming from Barmes or Barajas and now they're interested in Francis and Cook and ... thinking during the offseason, while losing sight of the real goal of the offseason. 

The real goal is that second sentence that's clipped up there: to create a team around McCutchen and Walker and Tabata and Alvarez that can succeed if the young players flourish. It's what they tried to do last year and to the front office's credit, it worked for part of a season. They took a rotation that was just completely awful in 2010, added James McDonald last in that season, rebuilt Charlie Morton from the ground up, signed Kevin Correia, and went into spring training with seven pitchers they were relatively confident in. When Brad Lincoln got hit by a line drive in spring training and Ross Ohlendorf hurt his shoulder, they didn't have to trade for Hayden Penn or Dana Eveland and they didn't have to call up Brian Burres or Chris Jakubauskas. Jeff Karstens ended up being a better band-aid than anyone could've expected, but the reality is that the Pirates weren't trying to go into 2011 with the Phillies' rotation. They were trying to go into it with a rotation that could give them five or six innings and turn a lead over to the bullpen three or four times a week.

That was what they got from that rotation, more or less, and for a while they got even more than that and they rode that to first place along with a superstar first half from Andrew McCutchen. The Pirates got pretty much nothing from the position players they added last winter, though, so the whole thing inevitably collapsed on itself because Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata were hurt and not producing and Neil Walker faded early and Andrew McCutchen faded late and it all went up in a massive tower of flames so blinding that it wiped that weird, cautious optimism of June and July completely from memory. 

What else can you do but learn from your mistakes? As I wrote on Wednesday, the Pirates built a rotation in 2010 that turned out to have depth, but not a ton of talent. There just wasn't any way that they could sustain what they did early in the year. With Ohlendorf pitching (and not pitching) his way to a non-tender, Maholm leaving, Morton's hip injury, and slow development from Lincoln, Owens, Locke, Morris, and Wilson, that creates quite a problem for the Pirates and it's why I've thought that the rotation is one of the Pirates' biggest concerns this winter. So what have the Pirates done? They went out and got Erik Bedard, who brings talent that's currently unmatched in their rotation. If that's the only move they make, I don't know if it'll be enough, but they've been conntected to a lot of pitchers this winter and that makes me think that maybe they're not done at one. They appear to be interested in two pitchers who've had success in Japan, and I'm guessing that they're still in on Jeff Francis, who can at least eat up some innings if health isn't an issue. Nothing's done yet, of course, but we could be looking at a huge rotation makeover this winter that results in James McDonald and Charlie Morton being the third and fourth best starters instead of the first and second. 

If that is, indeed, Huntington's plan for this offseason -- and remember that it might not be and that I'm just reading between the lines here -- it would certainly cast Barmes and Barajas in a new light. If the Pirates are overhauling the rotation, they don't necessarily need improvement over last year from Barmes and Barajas, so long as they get players better than Mike McKenry and Chase d'Arnaud. They'll still need improvement from Alvarez and Tabata and preferrably Walker, but they were always going to need that to have any sliver of hope in 2012. 

It's possible the Pirates are done wheeling and dealing for the winter, of course, in which case their success would be hinged on Bedard's health, Barmes, Barajas, Nate McLouth, and whatever Yamaico Navarro becomes. That could obviously be another ugly off-season for the Pirates. The point, though, is that it's hard to judge any off-season moves in isolation. It's always a larger project. Seeing the Pirates go hard after Bedard and extrapolating from there has shifted the way I'm thinking about this winter quite a bit. Let's see how things go from here.