Jerry Crasnick reports this afternoon that Ryan Doumit has signed a one-year/$3 million deal with the Twins. I guess Doumit makes sense as a competent back-up for the oft-injured Joe Mauer, plus a DH or a guy that can spell the oft-inured Justin Morneau from time to time, but it seems to me that this indicates that the market for Doumit wasn't nearly as hot as we were lead to believe last week. Doumit's likely looking for playing time to parlay into a bigger deal if he can stay healthy, which is obviously far from a sure thing with him. 

If you want to be skeptical, you can view this as evidence of a Pirate Tax, since Doumit's now making less than the Pirates are paying Rod Barajas. I don't think Doumit would've come back to Pittsburgh for $3 million (or $4 million, for that matter) and so the Pirates had to do something. In any case it's clear that the Pirates weren't the only ones with reservations about Doumit's health and poor defense behind the plate and that picking up his option would've been overpaying him at this point in his career. 

The best news to come out of this is that since Doumit has signed before the non-tender deadline, the Pirates will get a sandwich-round compensation pick without having to worry about offering him arbitration and having him accept. If Type B free agents still net comp picks when the new CBA is unveiled next Monday. Currently the best indication is that the 2012 draft compensation will happen under the old rules and any changes will go into effect in 2013, but we really won't know for sure for a couple of days. 

I mentioned this yesterday, but I wrote a bit longer about it at the Outside Corner: the new realignment and scheduling agreement means that the DH is coming to the NL sooner or later.

As you likely know by now, today is the day the Pirates have to finalize their 40-man roster for the Winter Meetings and the Rule 5 draft. Both WTM and Tim have good preveiws (Bucs Dugout, Pirates Prospects) and I'd recommend that you read them, because the Pirates have quite a few decisions to make today. 

As it stands right now, the Bucs have 34 players on the 40-man roster after Brandon Wood was outrighted and claimed by the Rockies yesterday. It's probably safe to assume that the Pirates will leave a roster spot open for a Rule 5 pick, which means that the Pirates will be adding at least five players to the roster and possibly more (Matt Pagnozzi or Jason Jaramillo, Xavier Paul, and Pedro Ciriaco could all be removed from the roster, while Jose Veras, Ross Ohlendorf, Garrett Jones, and a few other guys are potential non-tenders that could be outrighted a bit early). That's a huge amount of the 40-man, when you really get down to it. 

There are a few no-brainers here. Starling Marte will certainly need to be added and it's hard to imagine any circumstance under which Rudy Owens and Justin Wilson aren't added, too. That's already three of the five spots, with Matt Hague, Jordy Mercer, Andrew Lambo, Tim Alderson, Brett Lorin, Aaron Pribanic, Diego Moreno, and Duke Welker still left to consider. I would add Quincy Latimore, but then I'd be immediately taking him off the list because he doesn't have enough power to balance his .308 career minor league OBP and it'd be pretty shocking to see him drafted. 

So, let's start our 39-man roster at 34, then remove Matt Pagnozzi and Xavier Paul from the roster (32). Marte, Wilson, and Owens all go on, which brings us to 35. We've got four slots left. I think the Pirates have to give Mercer and Hague roster spots because really, the Pirates are probably going to need them on the big league roster in 2012. Mercer might be the best shortstop of the d'Arnaud/Ciriaco/Mercer trio and risking letting him go at this point wouldn't be very bright. Hague, meanwhile, could be useful as a platoon first baseman if the Pirates play Garrett Jones or some scrap-heap reject lefty at first base (Branyan!). They're both close enough to the Majors with interesting enough skills that they could be lost in the draft, even if neither is a super-prospect. Remember: the Pirates drafted Josh Rodriguez last year; someone would probably be willing to take a flyer on Mercer or Hague. 

Now we're at 37, which leaves a spot for two out of Lambo, Alderson, Lorin, Pribanic, Moreno, and Welker. Lambo, as usual, is a difficult call. He's only 23 and he just had a decent year in Double-A, but he's been a Double-A regular since 2009 and he flamed out in Triple-A in 2011. He's still a semi-prospect, so it's possible that someone will draft him and hide him to try and reap future rewards, but he might be really tough to hide given his performance with Indy in 2010. Alderson creates kind of the same pinch, he's still really young and projectible and he was really good early in 2011 after being moved to the bullpen, but he flamed out in the second half. If I'm the Pirates, I'd take my risks and leave him unprotected, but if they do so I'm also pretty sure that someone will take a chance on him. 

So, we've got two spots for Lorin, Pribanic, Moreno, and Welker now. I'd protect Lorin and I think the Pirates will, too. He's a big guy (6'7") that has interesting stuff and very good numbers in the low minors, but health problems have dictated that he was still in the low minors at the age of 24 last year. The Pirates probably could've moved him to Altoona last year and didn't, which may be indicative of something. Still, if he's healthy in 2012 he could be a quick riser and find himself in Triple-A or even Pittsburgh late in the year and he's old enough that someone may take a flier on him based on the idea that his age makes him more advanced than most guys that haven't risen above Advanced-A. Pribanic, meanwhile, strikes me as someone the Pirates might protect (think Mike Crotta), but who'd I'd be slow to hold on to. He's a sinkerballer that doesn't do much else, so as a result he's got a decent minor league ERA but a Zach Duke strikeout rate (a strikeout every other inning) even as a 24-year old in Double-A. 

Lorin brings us to 38, so we've got one final spot for the two relievers, Welker and Moreno. Moreno was really intriguing back in 2009 when he struck out more than a hitter an inning with West Virginia, but he's had behavioral problems and control problems and at 24, still spent some time in Advanced-A this year and struggled at Double-A. Welker, meanwhile, was the second round pick way back in 2007 and seemed hopelessly lost at sea until this year, when he suddenly he found some control and became an effective reliever for Bradenton and Altoona. If I were picking between the two, I'd take Welker because he's improving whereas I think Moreno may have stagnated, but it's not exactly an either/or because Alderson or Lambo or Pribanic could all go in this spot, too. It's also possible that the Pirates will open up more roster spots (no one would really miss Ciriaco, I don't think, and Ohlendorf and Veras a pretty likely to be gone in a few weeks anyway) or they could fill the roster to 40 just not make a pick this year, since they haven't had much success in the draft since the miracle Evan Meek pick a few years ago. 

Regardless, though, I think that Marte, Owens, Wilson, Mercer, and Hague should all be protected and I'd take Lorin, too. After that, it's a bit more of a crapshoot and it probably matters a little bit less, but I'd expect the Pirates to at least take a couple guys out of the Lambo/Alderson/Pribanic/Welker/Moreno pool, if not more.  

Major League Baseball has approved of the sale of the Astros to Jim Crane today, and with it the announcement that the Astros will move to the American League in 2013 is official. If you remember back to my FanHouse days, I've written quite a bit about realignment and how dumb I think having unbalanced leagues and divisions are and I'm happy those days will finally be over. I don't really care about the Astros either way (some of my worst memories of the 1990s at Three Rivers are hot summer Sunday afternoon games with Bagwell and Biggio destroying the Pirates and Drabek and Shane Reynolds on the mound dominating), but they seem like a weird choice to go to the AL given their extensive NL history. When Milwaukee flipped leagues, the city at least had an NL legacy. Houston has nothing to do with the AL and I would've thought moving a team like the Marlins or Diamondbacks would make more sense. 

On a sadder note, I'm almost certain that making interleague play a constant "30 games per year" thing for every team is going to bring the DH to the NL within five years. Selig says things won't change, but I don't believe him. We might as well all just accept it now. 

I realize this is yesterday's news, but I wanted to talk a bit about Rob Biertempfel's report that extension talks have cooled between the Pirates and Neil Walker. On the surface, this isn't a big deal. Walker's a solid-but-not-spetacular second baseman and he will, at the very most, be a super-two eligible for arbitration after the 2012 season. It would be nice for the Pirates to get some cost certainty with him and to maybe tease down the price in the event that he does become a super-two, but it's not something that needs to be imminent. The Pirates have much more immediate things to worry about for the upcoming season and they have a better player in Andrew McCutchen, who should be more of a priority even if he'll be a tougher sign. 

Of course, it's not so easy with Walker because he's from Pittsburgh. That makes him popular with the fans and (most annoyingly to me) that makes him the guy the team pushes out front, even if that means having the broadcasting team spew nonsense about his RBI totals night after during the summer. Whenever this happens, I tend to go out of my way to point out Walker's shortcomings, which in turn makes a lot of Pirate fans angry at me because Walker is lots of Pirate fans' favorite player, for obvious reason. This starts an endless cycle of bickering and so I want to take a step back and assess Walker a bit better as a player and try to get a better idea of what the Pirates should be trying to do with him in the coming years. 

Because the Baseball Establishment -- from the managers to the broadcasters to the portion of the media that is staid in their beliefs -- can be so inflexible in their reliance on "traditional" baseball stats (and thus, in how the game is related from them to the public), bloggers like me that write with a saber-slant have a tendency to go overboard in making points that question the status quo. Take, for example, the Jonathan Papelbon contract. Papelbon's deal with the Phillies is worth between $12 and $12.5 million over four or five years. That's a ton of money to pay for a reliever and the general saber-consensus is that relievers simply aren't worth that much because they don't pitch that much. In six full seasons with the Red Sox, though, FanGraphs estimates that Papelbon was worth about $62 million. Now maybe there's something to be said for WAR as it translates to value for relievers (that is, good relievers often come out of nowhere and can be very underpaid and thus maybe the shorthand of 1 win = $4-$5 million doesn't hold true for them, but of course mediocre relievers often get huge deals and so we could go in this circle forever) and if that's true the Red Sox overpaid, but the reality is that Jonathan Papelbon is an excellent reliever who's been head and shoulders better than anyone not named Mariano Rivera since 2006 and by the same metrics that people use to evaluate players, he's very nearly worth the money the Phillies are paying him. But since relievers are often overpaid and because pointing this out is one of every stat-head's hobby horses, a lot got made about Papelbon's deal even though it's entirely possible (or, at the very least not out of the realm of discussion) that the Phillies really didn't overpay for him by that much. 

I use this as an example because this is what I do with Neil Walker. Walker is praised by broadcasters and writers and Pirate fans for 1.) his high RBI totals (his 83 RBIs lead all NL second baseman and was third in baseball), 2.) his glove (his fielding percentage tied Brandon Phillips for the best in the NL at second base) and 3.) the general perception that he's clutch. These things drive me crazy because 1.) RBIs are very context-based and not really a meaningful indicator of anything on their own, 2.) his glove isn't that great and it's not hard to see his range is kind of poor when you watch him play and 3.) that's a silly reason to think a player is good. And so I spend a lot of time railing against RBIs and pointing out Walker's shortcomings as a fielder and destroying arguments about clutch, but I don't spend a lot of time saying this: Neil Walker is actually a pretty good second baseman. 

If we stick with FanGraphs' WAR as a metric, there were only nine second basemen better than Walker in 2011, and only four of them were in the National League. And if you look at any advanced fielding metric, they'll all tell you that Walker got a lot better in 2011. He went from -9 to -5 in Defensive Runs Saved, even though he played more games in 2011. He went from -17.1 to -2.5 in UZR/150. His dWAR at Baseball-Reference (based on Total Zone Rating) went from -0.9 to -0.3. I understand that a lot of people are on the fence about these advanced fielding metrics for a lot of reasons (some good, some not so good), but when three of them agree the way do here I feel pretty good about drawing the general conclusion that while Walker was pretty bad with the glove in 2010, he wasn't nearly as bad in 2011 even if he wasn't quite as good as people think. 

And at the plate, just throw the RBIs out for a second. Forget about them entirely. Walker hit .273/.334/.408 in 2011. The average NL second baseman hit .258/.319/.380. Walker did it despite struggling from the right side of the plate for a huge chunk of the year and with a huge power-outage after May 20th (he had six homers on May 20th, he finished with 12). Those numbers are a step back from his 2010 numbers for sure, but remember that in 2009 he had a .304 OBP at Triple-A. His walk rate last year, one of everyone's biggest concerns, was 8.4%, which is well-improved from his 6.7% at Indianapolis. In general, I think he's showed a positive offensive trend in his two years with the Pirates even if last year as a bit of a step backwards from 2010. 

So where does Walker go from here? I don't know that his ceiling is much higher than what we saw in 2011, to be honest. In general it seems like players peak young defensively, though Walker's relative inexperience at the position might make him the exception to that rule. I do think he can probably hit with a bit more power than we saw last year, though I'm concerned about the switch-hitting struggles. All the same, though, if Walker can be around a 3 WAR player for the Pirates for the four years (and maybe beyond if they get that extension worked out), he'll be a very solid player and second base will be a position the Pirates won't have to worry about for a while. It won't be for any of the reasons that you might read about in the newspaper or hear on TV, but it'll still be true. 

Mike Fast has been doing some great work at Baseball Prospectus this year, and today he continues it with a look at how the speed off of the bat affects balls in play for both hitters and pitchers. It can get pretty dense, but Fast does a good job explaining both where the sabermetric consensus on pitchers and balls in in play is today and where it can go with this sort of analysis, plus he's promising a second, more extensive article. I'd highly recommend reading the whole thing, because it's very interesting stuff.

The short version of it, though, is that pitchers do appear to have some control over how the speed off of the bat, which would imply that they also have some control over batting average on balls in play. They don't have as much control over it as batters do (which is why stats like DIPS and FIP have been useful), but they do have some control. There's obviously a lot more analysis to be done, relating these numbers back to performance, but it does look like it's a big leap in understanding what pitchers can and can't control on the mound. 

This morning Joel Sherman's been tweeting about how the potential CBA changes will affect Jose Reyes's Type A free agent status (they won't), but during the stream he's mentioned that the expectation is that the new CBA will do away with Type B free agents entirely. That would include Derrek Lee and Ryan Doumit, who the Pirates were likely hoping to get picks for, as well as Ryan Ludwick and Chris Snyder, who the Pirates were probably unlikely to offer arbitration to. 

Of course there's a lot of stuff going around about the CBA right now and we won't know much for sure until it's finalized. Tim Dierkes, for example, says that this is the first he's heard of Type B free agents being eliminated (not that Tim has inside information here, necessarily, but rather that it's likely that he's read a whole lot more about this than anyone else), so it's possible that some of the rumors we're hearing over the last few days won't come true. As a Pirate fan, I'm obviously more concerned about the draft changes, but narrowing down free agent compensation seems like something targeted at a team like the Rays, who've worked the system to their advantage (of course, the Red Sox have as well), and that's a little concerning to me.

I wrote this about last weekend's Jamey Carroll Sweepstakes over at the Outside Corner. I'm planning on making my winter posts over there part of a recurring theme: the winter is a rough time to be the fan of any team except for a few of baseball's biggest spenders. 

Neal Huntington joined with Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein (I know!) this weekend at Buster Olney's "Going to Bat for Vermont Farmers" benefit to help the region recover from Hurricane Irene, and Jed from Sox Detox was there to chronicle the event. He wrote that Huntington, who's inclusion probably stems from the fact that he's a New Hampshire native, held his own pretty well with the big-market guys and in a brief chat with him afterwards discussed everything from trading Joel Hanrahan to Rod Barajas to Pedro Alvarez to Starling Marte to pitcher development. It's definitely worth your time to check out both links. 

Ryan Doumit reportedly turned down a 1-year/$3 million offer from the Dodgers over the weekend. That's quite a bit less than the Pirates would've owed him on his team option and even less than the Pirates are paying Rod Barajas, so it's possible that quite a few clubs have downgraded Doumit due to his poor defense behind the plate and inability to stay healthy. Jerry Crasnick expects him to sign a one-year deal (presumably to drive his value up some) soon. As Tim pointed out last week, that'd be nice because it'd ensure that the Pirates get a draft pick for him, assuming that sort of compensation for Type B free agents holds in the new CBA. 

Speaking of which, Buster Olney has some interesting stuff on the new CBA this morning and it looks like there will be some real changes to the draft. They would include a 10-round ceiling based on slot recommendations. Teams wouldn't be forced to adhere to slot guidelines, but they'd be penalized for going over the ceiling. Right now it looks like they'll be taxed the first time and penalized by losing a pick the second time. Nothing's set in stone yet, but it looks like this is aimed at keeping teams like the Pirates from making big first and second round picks. Which is pretty unfortunate, for obvious reasons. We'll have to stay tuned to see how it all plays out. 

Gerrit Cole had a solid bounce-back performance on Saturday after his disastrous start in the AFL Rising Stars Game. He struck out four, walked one, and gave up one run on two hits in a three inning outing. 

Robbie Grossman's breakout 2011 season won't have a happy ending. Kristy Robinson reported last night that the outfielder broke a hamate bone in one of his hands and is due for surgery next week. The problem with a hamate injury, as Pirate fans know well by now (Jose Tabata injured his hamate in the minors with the Yankees, Pedro Alvarez injured his at Vanderbilt) is that it can sap a player's power for up to a year while he recovers. Grossman is coming off of a career-high 13 homers and 34 doubles with the Bradenton Marauders this year in addition to lighting up the Arizona Fall League, and the biggest question around him right now is whether he can really develop that power into something to go with his great plate patience. Now, we'll likely be waiting an extra year for the answer to that question.

And this was shaping up to be such a nice fall-ball season between Grossman and Gerrit Cole and Chris Leroux throwing well in the Dominican. Cole pitches again tonight and can hopefully erase the ugly start he made in last Saturday's Rising Stars Game.