There's not much news to kick the year off with here and I'm going to be driving today, so I won't be around to update much. There are a couple things that I did want to mention before I forget about them, though.

First off, there was news earlier in the week that Ian Snell would pitch for Puerto Rico in the WBC. I think this is generally good news, if only to give Snell a bit of a chance to really get himself ironed out this spring and start really thinking about pitching a few weeks early. He seems excited about the whole thing and that lead to him echoing Jack Wilson's call for the Pirates to get more "players" in yesterday's PG. So the guy who underachieved all last year, pouted, and made excuses for his bad performances is now looking to Neal Huntington to add some talent to the team. How Ian Snell pitches next year will have far more impact on the 2009 Pirates than any player Huntington could've realistically added this season. On a semi-related noted, I'm hoping to get back to the Snell PitchFX stuff that I started earlier this offseason and haven't had a chance to do much with since. So brace yourselves for that.

One player the Pirates won't be adding this winter is Derrick Turnbow. There's not a lot to be said about Turbow that hasn't been said ad nauseum. It's good that we don't have to think about him anymore and it's good that my unoriginality doesn't have to be exposed when I talk about "Turnblow" and "Grablow" in the same post on some hot July night this summer.

And while we're at it, John Sickels has his list of the Pirates' top 20 prospects. He's pretty high on Robbie Grossman and Bryan Morris. Like most other people who do this sort of thing, he notes that the Pirates' system is "thin but improving" and when reading about guys like Grossman and Quinton Miller, it seems like he thinks several of these guys may grade out higher in a year or two.

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