After a long, weird negotiation, Ken Rosenthal reported this afternoon that the Pirates and Francisco Liriano have finally finalized a version of the two-year/$12.75 million contract that we'd all thought the two sides agreed to back before Christmas. The main difference in the deal is that if Liriano misses any time this year due to his injury (which Rosenthal characterizes as a broken non-pitching arm), his 2013 salary will be rolled back accordingly. 

Assuming that there are no more weird plot twists in this story, that leaves the Pirates with a rotation of Burnett, Rodriguez, McDonald, Karstens, and Liriano for 2013, with Jeff Locke, Kyle McPherson, Vin Mazzaro, and Jeanmar Gomez to provide immediate depth while Gerrit Cole gets himself ready in Indianapolis. I spent most of the winter warning about rotation depth and how the Pirates could really be in for disaster this year, so bringing Karstens back and signing Liriano are both welcome moves. This pitching staff still raises plenty of questions (Rapid fire: How much do Burnett and Wandy have left? How many innings can you count on from the old guys? James McDonald in general. How many innings is Karstens good for and is he due for some regression? Was betting on Francisco Liriano a really dumb idea? What happened to his arm anyway? Can Locke or McPherson be a solid big league pitcher if they have to be? How quickly will Cole be ready? Seriously, why even waste time with Gomez or Mazzaro? Should I have mentioned Justin Wilson or is he just going to be a reliever?) but it's fair to say that the Pirates have five Major League pitchers that are all capable of pitching well in their rotation for now and that Locke and McPherson aren't really bad options as fringey sixth starters (I'm not opposed to giving either of them innings in 2013; it was just the thought of having to give them innings for lack of other options that worried me). 

Like many of the things that we're going to talk about as the 2013 season approaches (I'm going to be blogging more regularly, honest!), there are two different Pirate rotations to consider right now. There's a Theoretical Ideal Pirate rotation, which is actually pretty good. There's a lot of talent in this group -- more so than in any season in recent memory, I think -- that could make that group of five a productive group if everything goes right for the Pirates. There are also plenty of things that could go wrong, which means that the other Pirate rotation -- the Actual Pirate Rotation -- isn't going to be nearly as good as the ideal one. The problem is that 40% of this fivesome is getting up there in age and 40% is maddeningly inconsistent and 20% is Jeff Karstens. That makes it  hard to figure out where this group will fall on the "ideal outcome/abject disaster" continuum, which is kind of maddening with spring training so near. 

When the news came out a couple of days ago that Andrew McCutchen wouldn't be taking part in the World Baseball Classic because he wanted to dedicate himself to getting ready for his 2013 season with the Pirates, I had two thoughts: 

1.) Well, at least he won't get hurt or burn himself out early this year.

2.) I still kind of wish Andrew McCutchen had a chance to show off for a larger audience.

As it turns out, there are still eight Pirate players that will take place in the World Baseball Classic this spring, even with 'Cutch staying on the sidelines to prep for the part of the baseball season that actually counts. You would probably expect Russell Martin (born in Ontario, once put 'J. Martin' on his jersey to honor his French Canadian mother) and Chris Leroux (born in Quebec) to play for Team Canada, but you might not expect that they'd be joined by Jameson Taillon. For whatever reason (Wikipedia says his parents are Canadians, but Wikipedia also says [citation needed]), though, Taillon is pitching for the Canadian team this spring, and so all Pirate fans -- Bradenton bound or not -- should have a chance to watch the Pirates' second best prospect pitch this spring. In addition to the Canadian contingent, Wandy Rodriguez will pitch for the Dominican Republic, Ali Solis (a recently-signed Triple-A depth catcher) is on the Mexican roster, the recently-acquired Ivan DeJesus will play for Puerto Rico, minor league infielder Stefan Welch will play for Australia, and Jason Grilli will pitch for Italy. 

Jason Grilli was born in Michigan and grew up in New Jersey and went to Seton Hall. But he'll pitch for Italy, because, hey! World Baseball Classic! 

I don't have much else to add, other than that I'm going to spend the next two months terrified about Jameson Taillon pitching for someone other than the Pirates so early in the year, but that I'm also kind of excited to watch him and intrigued to see how he does. And I'm armed and ready with plenty of Alpha Flight jokes for the Pirates' Canadian contingent this spring because for some reason, I've always had a soft spot for Alpha Flight and I may or may not have all of Alpha Flight volume 2 in a comic book box in a closet in my parents house. 

Almost immediately after I pushed "publish" on that last post, news came across the interwebs that the Pirates had agreed to a one-year deal with Jeff Karstens. Bill Brink at the PG is reporting that it's a one-year deal worth $2.5 million, which you may note is actually $600,000 less than he made with the Pirates last year. A big reason the Pirates non-tendered him earlier this off-season was that they didn't think he'd be worth the raise he was due through the arbitration process (~$4 million), so this is a pretty nice deal for a Pirate team that badly needs pitching depth. 

In fact, at $2.5 million I'd be mad if the Pirates didn't bring Karstens back. Over the last two seasons, Karstens has evolved from a fringe big leaguer into a pretty useful arm. In both 2011 and 2012, he increased his strikeout percentage and decreased his walk percentage to the point that his K/BB ratio last year was an excellent 4.40. The two problems are that his stuff isn't overwhelming, which means that there are plenty of doubts about his ability to repeat his two-year mini-breakout, and that he's not durable at all*.

While you could argue that the Pirates' non-tendering of Karstens was justified, that still didn't mean that it made a whole ton of sense. As I've been saying ad nauseum, the Pirates have depth problems in their rotation and 90 or 110 or 130 innings of Jeff Karstens is 90 or 110 or 140 innings that don't need to be thrown by someone that's not a Major League pitcher. When the Pirates signed Russell Martin, I wrote that while Martin might be worth $17 million to two years to some teams, that I wasn't sure the Pirates were one of those teams. You could make the opposite case about Karstens: that he wasn't necessarily going to be worth $4 million, but that he would've been worth $4 million to the Pirates. Now, we don't have to worry about that.

All of that being said, I think the Pirates could really still use Francisco Liriano or Shaun Marcum in the rotation. Karstens helps things out a bit, but he still only contributes maybe half of a rotation spot to a team that has, at the absolute most, three Major League capable starters right now. Bringing Karstens back is a start and it's a win for Neal Huntington at this price, but I still think there's more work to be done.

In general, the arc of winter for a Pirate fan goes like this: 

1. Depression bought about by the end of the season.
2. Talking yourself into the coming season's team as the front office makes trades and signings.
3. Release of the ZiPS projections, followed by the crushing realization that upcoming Year Y will be no better than the prior Year X. 

Today: FanGraphs has the 2013 Pirates ZiPS projections!

Actually, as Carson Cistulli notes in his post about the projections at FanGraphs, the projections take a bit of a different path for the Pirates on the offensive side. Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker can be expected to give Andrew McCutchen some help at the plate and Starling Marte and Russell Martin should at least be solid contributors due to their defense and at least some offensive help.

I'm not here to talk about the offense, though, because once you scroll past the encouraging offensive numbers there's a much grimmer sight waiting for you. Out of the Pirates' entire pitching staff, only Wandy Rodriguez is pegged for more than 1.5 WAR and Phil Irwin is projected to be the team's fifth best starter, if you throw out Jeff Karstens (who's still associated with the Pirates, presumably because he hasn't signed elsewhere yet). This is terrifying. You can say that maybe James McDonald finds some consistency and that some of these guys (Irwin, Kyle McPherson, Gerrit Cole, even Jeff Locke, whose ZiPS are probably hurt by his bad numbers in a small big league sample the last two seasons) are young and talented or have had non-traditional minor league careers, which means they could be better than a projection system thinks that they might be, but sheeeeesh, basically 60% of the Pirates' rotation is staked to that assumption right now.

This is why it's no surprise to learn that the Pirates are still negotiating with Francisco Liriano, despite his arm injury that came after the two sides agreed to terms and why they're interested in Shaun Marcum, who's injury problems have kept him on the market late into the winter, and even why they'd be looking into Joe Saunders, who's basically a left-handed Kevin Correia. It was fine that the Pirates let Kevin Correia wander off into free agency and not-as-completely-indefensible-as-people-think that they non-tendered Jeff Karstens (who, you'll note, hasn't generated much interest to this point in the off-season), but they haven't added any real options to the starting rotation at this point (Jeanmar Gomez and Vin Mazzaro are depth guys, not people you want to lean on) and you end up where the Pirates are right now. 

Pitchers and catchers report in 28 days. The clock is ticking ... 

It would be fairly easy to write the trade the Pirates made today with the Indians that sent Quincy Latimore into Cleveland's system in return for Jeanmar Gomez as a minor move of little consequence, but it's early January and nothing else is happening. Plus, I need to get back into blogging shape for spring training in a few weeks, so let's use this as a springboard to talk a bit about what trading for Jeanmar Gomez might tell us about the bigger picture as the Pirates prepare for 2013. 

Gomez was designated for assignment by the Indians last week after throwing 90 2/3 mostly bad innings for them in 2012. From 2010-2012, he made 42 appearances (38 starts) for Cleveland, putting up a 5.18 ERA and a 4.58 xFIP. In his 206 2/3 innings over those three seasons, he only struck out 112 batters (12.2%) and he served up 28 homers. These are all a bunch of ways of saying, "his ERA was bad and there's not much good buried underneath it." If you want to look for an encouraging sign, his career groundball rate is 49.2%, which is probably what gives us that lower xFIP. He put up good strikeout numbers as a 21-year old in Double-A back in 2009, but that's mostly tailed off since then. He doesn't throw all that hard (his average fastball is right around 90 mph, which is not very good for a righty), so what we've got is a pitcher that's not much more than big league depth. 

Latimore was the fourth round pick in Dave Littlefield's last draft (2007) and in the low minors he was an occasionally interesting fringe prospect due to his power, but he's moved slowly and in two seasons with Altoona (age 22 and 23) he only has a .308 OBP. He's depth, basically. Still, Gomez will need a 40-man roster spot and so it's worth asking why, exactly, the Pirates would want to waste even a non-prospect and a 40-man spot on a guy with little big league success and as little upside as Gomez has. 

The answer, I think, is that in the absence of Francisco Liriano (and we still don't know how this mysterious 'non-throwing arm injury' is going to pan out), the Pirates plan to address their rotation depth by just flinging a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. There's still time to get the Liriano situation sorted out and the Pirates aren't completely out of rotation options even if they decide to go in another direction, but I'm starting to get pretty seriously worried about the 2013 rotation. So far, we can be pretty sure that AJ Burnett, Wandy Rodriguez, and James McDonald will all have spots on Opening Day. There's a lot of talent in that trio, but Burnett is 36 and he tailed off last year and besides a dominant stretch in July and early August, he was really just a solid mid-rotation guy. McDonald is all over the map and unreliable. Rodriguez is 34 and given his dipping strikeout rate is probably headed for the "solid but unspectacular" portion of his career. 

That's not so bad, except that those are the top three spots in the Pirates' rotation and after them is a whole mess of uncertainty. Charlie Morton will probably miss the start of the season recovering from Tommy John surgery and when he returns, he'll be even more of a cipher than he was before. Jeff Locke has nice Triple-A numbers and hasn't had a long stint in the big leagues yet, but whenever he does start he gets hit hard. Kyle McPherson is interesting but has less than 50 innings above Double-A. Justin Wilson still seems like a reliever to me in the long term. Gerrit Cole likely needs more seasoning before a mid-season call-up. Guys like Vin Mazzaro and Jeanmar Gomez strike me as extra arms with some kind of upside in them to have around in camp in case Locke and McPherson and Morton and Phil Irwin and Cole aren't able to fill out the rotation on Opening Day. 

Of course, my concern here is that it's not at all crazy to think that Morton + the young guys won't add up to two starting pitchers on Day One, that there are plenty of concerns about the top three pitchers to boot, and that Jeanmar Gomez and Vin Mazzaro and Vin Mazzaro and Jeanmar Gomez. The clock is ticking faster every day. 

Remember way back before Christmas when the Pirates signed Francisco Liriano? And how that signing basically sealed the deal on a Joel Hanrahan trade on the assumption that Hanrahan's money was going towards Liriano? And how we all spent a bunch of time discussing whether or not Liriano was a better or worse risk/way to spend money than Jeff Karstens? And how the deal was dependent on a physical that was going to happen after the holidays?

Turns out, the only thing that mattered was that the deal was dependent on a physical, because as Rob Biertempfel is reporting today, Liriano injured his non-throwing arm back in December and while his agent is still talking to the Pirates about a deal, said deal is no longer "imminent." Huntington also gives Biertempfel a quote that makes it sound like the Pirates are now actively looking for other pitchers or preparing to go forward without Liriano. I'm not sure whether that's a scare tactic to get Liriano's agent to lower his price or if the unknown injury is bad enough to scare the Pirates off entirely because honestly, there's not a whole lot else that's known about it right now. 

I'm assuming that we'll have more details shortly. I've thought all winter that the Pirates needed to upgrade their rotation and Liriano was really the only move they made to do that: if he doesn't sign (or if he signs at a reduced price but can't pitch for any significant amount of time due to this injury), well, the Pirates are going to have to move quickly to address what I think are some pretty serious depth concerns with their starting rotation for 2013. 

The Pirates and Red Sox didn't waste much time after Christmas to get the Joel Hanrahan trade finalized, and the result isn't much different than what we were all speculating about back on December 23rd. We already knew the deal was going to involve Hanrahan going to the Red Sox with Jerry Sands, Stolmy Pimentel, and probably Mark Melancon coming to the Pirates. The teams have announced the trade today, confirming that Melancon is in the trade and that he last two players in the deal are Brock Holt going to the Red Sox and Ivan De Jesus Jr. coming to the Pirates. 

Swapping Holt and De Jesus seems like a pretty lateral move for both sides: Holt is a second baseman that probably doesn't have the defensive chops to play shortstop who had some minor league success that mostly came from his ability to hit for a high batting average. De Jesus (a second round pick of the Dodgers in 2005) started out as a shortstop but has mostly moved to second base in the upper minors. In three go-round at Triple-A he's hit .303/.355/.416, mostly with the Dodgers' affiliate in Albuquerque. 

Really this trade is going to come down to Hanrahan being swapped for Melancon. Hanrahan's had more recent success as the Pirates' closer, but it's pretty easy to make a case that Hanrahan's had some good luck in Pittsburgh (he had an impossibly low home run rate in 2011 and a very high strand rate in 2012 that kept his ERA down even while he struggled mightily with his control) and Melancon had some back luck in Boston in 2012. Hanrahan's clearly been the better reliever the last couple of years, but given that Melancon won't even hit arbitration until after the 2014 season and that his stuff and some of his peripherals indicate that he can be better than he was in 2012, it seems like a pretty decent gamble for the Pirates to take on this trade. 

If you consider De Jesus and Holt to be a wash, pretty much what we have here is Hanrahan for Melancon and Jerry Sands, plus a project in Pimentel. That's not a solid starting pitcher or a starting shortstop, but the time for Hanrahan to bring that in a trade was probably last winter and not this winter. Melancon's a bit of a project, but I see this trade as an attempt to bring in a talented reliever that will be a Pirate for the forseeable future, plus another guy with a decent bat to throw into a corner outfield mix that's full of potential and short on sure things. I think that's probably about the most the Pirates could've expected to get for Hanrahan this winter and while I don't think it's a slam dunk great trade, it seems to me like it's a pretty good one. 

We're rolling up to the 18-hour milestone in the extended saga that's been the Joel Hanrahan trade, and we still don't know the full details of the trade. This is what we think we probably might know at this point:

• Joel Hanrahan will go to the Red Sox, along with another unnamed Pirate or Pirate prospect.
• Stolmy Pimentel and Jerry Sands will come to the Pirates. 
• Mark Melancon may come to the Pirates, as well. 
• There are four players coming to the Pirates in total. 
• The deal isn't actually finalized, so probably every single bit of this is subject to change. 

Because of the way this deal is unfolding, it was pretty easy to get a bad taste in your mouth for what seemed to be the basics of the trade yesterday: Pimentel and Sands seem like pretty typical Neal Huntington Warm Bodies. They're both guys that have some upside but that also seem pretty one dimensional and are probably unlikely to be more than role players at the big league level. Melancon, well, if he was any good why would the Red Sox need Hanrahan?

Here's the thing, though: Melancon had a 6.20 ERA last year because he gave up eight homers and 31 runs in 45 innings. He gave up five homers and nine runs in his first two. From June 11 onwards (after returning from his demotion to Triple-A), he struck out 40, walked ten, and allowed three homers in 43 innings. He hit rough patches in July and August, but was pretty spectacular in June and September. As in the past, he was very good against righties and bad against lefties, but for some reason Bobby Valentine let him face 87 lefties. He's got a heavy fastball that gets a lot of groundballs (50% groundball rate last year, 56.7% in his good year with the Astros) and that averaged a career high 93.3 mph last year.

This is not to suggest that Melancon is as good as or better than Hanrahan is right now, only that there is a good pitcher lurking beneath those ugly numbers and that he has good talents for a reliever and that maybe he's similar to the Joel Hanrahan the Pirates traded for in 2007. We can't know that for sure, of course, and like everything the Pirates do it involves some risk. Everyone hoped that the Pirates would be able to flip Hanrahan for a difference-making starting pitcher or a young shortstop that could finally fill the gap that the Piirates have had there for years, but if they can swap one year of Hanrahan for five years of a solid reliever, plus some other players with upside? That might not be a great trade, but I don't think it would be a bad one, either.

Of course there are more questions about and facets to this deal than simply one year of Hanrahan for five years of Melancon,  but if Melancon is indeed included in this trade (and we don't know that he is for sure, though it seems like a safe bet that the Pirates will get at least one bullpen arm from Boston in the final trade, whatever form it takes) it changes the way that I look at it quite a bit. 

I woke up early today, got in my car, drove from North Carolina back to Western PA, opened up my phone, and found out Joel Hanrahan had been traded to the Red Sox. Welcome home! 

There are still quite a few unknowns with this deal, so let's start with what we know for now. Jim Bowden (Twitter link above) first reported it as Hanrahan for Jerry Sands and Stolmy Pimentel with more unknown players involved. Jon Heyman updated that to say that it's a six-player deal: two from the Pirates to Boston for four in return. That means there's still half of a trade we're not sure about yet. 

Sands came up in the Dodgers' system and went to the Red Sox as part of the Adrian Gonzalez/Josh Beckett/Carl Crawford megatrade. He's a 25-year old corner outfielder/first baseman that's hit with power all through the Dodgers' system (35 homers in 2010 between Single-A and Double-A, 29 in Triple-A in 2011, and 26 in Triple-A last year). He didn't show much with the Dodgers in 2011 or 2012, though he really hasn't gotten an extended shot at the big leagues right now. 

Pimentel is a hard-throwing 22-year old Dominican righty that hasn't had much success in the minors to this point and his prospect status has faded in the last couple of years. WEEI says that the Pirates were interested in him last time they dealt with the Sox (the Jason Bay trade), so presumably they still see something they like there even though he's hit a rough patch lately. 

My gut reaction is that this is an underwhelming return (though I'd also tell you that Hanrahan is pretty hugely overrated by Pirate fans right now), but I don't really want judge this trade one way or another until I have some more time to think about it and until we know what the final tally is. I'll do my best to update this post as soon as possible, though you can always keep an eye on MLB Trade Rumors (where all of the links in this post were pulled from, of course) in the meantime. 

UPDATE (10:42): Gordon Edes reports that Mark Melancon will also be in the deal, headed to the Pirates. Melancon, you may recall, was part of last winter's attempts by the Red Sox to acquire back-of-the-bullpen help, when they traded Jed Lowrie to Houston for him. Melancon was terrible for the Red Sox last year, but it was partially due to an explosion in HR/FB ratio, which is something that may have been out of his control. When he was with Houston he found success in 2011 by inducing a ton of groundballs (56%) with a decent strikeout rate (7.9 K/9, 21.4% K-rate). If he can get his home runs down back in the NL Central in 2013, I think there's a pretty good chance he'll be a solid reliever again. 

There's still two more names to be reported/announced in this deal (one from each team), so there's still a pretty good chance that the tenor of final deal will be much different once we know all the pieces.