The Pirates have played more than a week's worth of spring training games and now the loss of WBC players obscures the meanings of the results even more, but there's at least a few things that we can say with relative confidence.

• Donnie Veal's control has looked pretty good so far. I think he's getting a roster spot, so it's nice to see he's pitching well.
  
• Andy LaRoche is 4-for-8. Honestly, after last year, I'd be happy if he were 4-for-8 against a pitching machine.
  
• Pedro Alvarez has caught up after missing time and being out of shape in mini-camp.
  

The funny part about the spring is when a team like the Pirates starts out 6-1, everyone says, "I know it doesn't mean anything, but I'd rather they be 6-1 than 1-6." I've always thought that statement was kind of funny, because it's not really true. I mean, sure, it's nice to feel like they're not embarrassing themselves in spring training games, but these games really don't mean anything. They're 6-1 now, but will that fact keep people from being more upset when they start the real season out 1-6?

That said, I was totally serious about the "Grapefruit League Champs" shirts if the Pirates stay in first until the season starts. And I'm sorry for the low volume of posts this week, but my brother is in town and as you might have noticed, I've done a ton of WBC stuff for FanHouse this week.

I suppose I should've mentioned this earlier, but if any WHYGAVS readers are in Bradenton at any point this spring and have pictures, stories, etc. that you want to share, I'd love for you to either post them in the forum (I'd actually prefer this, register for the forum here), or send them along to me. I can't be in Bradenton this spring and I know a lot of fans are in the same boat, so I'd be happy to be an outlet for first hand stories from camp.

I got an e-mail from reader Jeff Bobek yesterday who took in the 2-1 win over the Reds a few days ago and he had a few interesting observations:

First of all, nothing was more interesting that watching Kerrigan get Zack Duke warmed up.  Kerrigan stood by the plate with a bat in his hand, calling out pitch counts to Duke and moving a 4-inch wide stripe to different parts of the plate as a target.  Every single out-ball-strike count had a strategy and a placement.  Duke was clearly a model pupil - when the game began, he was terrific through three and was hitting the spots that Kerrigan had him working on before the game.

The other pitcher who impressed was Evan Meek.  While he was taking his warmup tosses, my wife turned to me and said "who's that guy, he has the easiest motion ever."  He had great control and was sharp in getting the save.

While it didn't show up in the box score, the one pitcher who looked overmatched was Dan McCutchen.  Every ball put in play on him went more than 300 feet (including a homer, a double off the wall, and all three outs).  Seriously, he gave up about 1800 feet on five pitches, all of which easily could have been home runs.

McLouth and the other McCutcheon made two insane plays in the outfield, McLouth stretching out for a catch and A-Cutch gunning down a runner at the plate with a one-hop perfect throw.  Having watched McCutcheon play a few games for Altoona, I still have yet to see him put a ball in play with any authority, but this was the best Pirate throw I have ever seen in person. in 40 years of attending games.  (Sorry, I didn't see Clemente's throw in person in '71.)   And Jason Jaramillo gunned down two runners, he appears to have the quickest home to 2nd time of any recent catcher.

He also gave me two great pictures to share. One is of Pedro Alvarez, which Jeff gave to me with this caption, "Pedro was greatly accomodating with the fans after the game; he has a million-watt smile and my guess is the fans will soon forget the post-draft debacle."

And the other is a nice shot of three Pirate legends, Bill Mazeroski, Kent Tekulve, and Bill Virdon.

A big thanks to Jeff for sharing the report and pictures!

Today's headline that I never expected to see

Take THAT, vaguely placed European country that my terrible American sense of geography always confuses with Denmark!

Can we put a pennant up that says "Grapefruit League Champs" if we keep this up? I at least want a t-shirt.

There's an interesting piece about Neil Walker at Pirates.com today that examines the weird place that the organization has put him in this spring with Andy LaRoche ahead of him and Pedro Alvarez behind him. I know that we've talked about this before, but this sentence jumps out at me:

He spent the 2008 season in Triple-A, marking his full season at the highest Minor League level. And, although his batting average suffered from some early season adjustments, Walker said he felt that by the end of the season he matched up with the experienced players at the level.

[...]

Yet a season that began with Walker hitting just .200 during the season's first month was seen by him as an overall significant step forward. Why? Because by the end of it, Walker felt he had proven to himself that he matched up with the high Minor League talent that he faced.

It's nice that Walker feels that he settled in by the end of the year with Indy last year, but here are his monthly splits:

• April: .200/.263/.376
• May: .245/.264/.453
• June: .248/.280/.515
• July: .230/.257/.330
• August: .275/.331/.394

And his power completely dried up, with three of his sixteen homers coming in July and August. That's "matched up with the experienced players at the level?" Really? Walker was overwhelmed at AAA last year and the only part of his game that didn't suffer was his power. That's not really a great profile for a hitter.

So what's the solution? I'm not really surprised to hear that his glove can handle third base, I saw him a couple times in 2007 when he moved there and it was obvious he had the raw tools to handle the position. So do now that he's comfortable, do you move him again to second? I know Cory's suggested it and it's crossed my mind in the past as well. His bat would certainly play better there, but the team loves Shelby Ford at second and he's honestly not that far behind Walker as a prospect at this point.

It's still too early to write Walker off completely, but just barely. He could adapt to AAA this year and Andy LaRoche could tank again and we really wouldn't have a problem. Still, even right now it's easy to see where he's going to slip between the cracks if he doesn't improve pretty dramatically this year.

DK's reporting some unexpected news today: John Grabow's been selected to replace Brian Fuentes on the US WBC roster for as long as Fuentes is out with "family issues." That's likely the first round, so after the US advances Grabow will be back with the Pirates.

Immediately, two thoughts come to mind when I read this news. The first is that I'm happy for Grabow, who's come a long way from back when he was John Grablow in 2004 and 2005. He's a solid reliever that's toiled in relative obscurity for his whole career and he deserves a chance to pitch on a bigger stage. This immediately leads me to my second thought which was, "a bigger stage for Grabow is a showcase for a trade." It sounds like Grabow gave Huntington a chance to sign off on this move and he did, and I'm guessing he did that with this in mind.

Of course that's all speculation on my part, but it is cool to see a Pirate selected to the American team.

I wanted to have a longer post up today, but the power's been out in my apartment for about 12 hours. That means no internet, which means no WHYGAVS.

There's a few interesting discussion points about the future of baseball and internet media that I've seen the last couple days. With the news that the Rocky Mountain News is closing up its print operation, Dave Cameron wrote a piece for FanGraphs about how the move towards more open and free media is good for baseball fans:

Much like the open source movement in software, there’s been a revolution in the baseball community. The best content available isn’t being written in books or newspapers, or even behind subscription walls that require payments to access - the best knowledge available is free to everyone who wants it.

It's an interesting point so long as you don't misinterpret it "Bloggers > Beat Writers." I certainly don't think that WHYGAVS could ever replace the service that Dejan gives to Pirate fans and since Dave is an excellent team blogger at USS Mariner, I assume he feels the same way. But one point (and it's not entirely my own, though I can't for the life of me remember where I read it to give the original author credit) that needs to be made is that the internet as a medium is in its infancy. Think about television: it existed relatively unchanged from the late 1930s when it was concieved until the 1980s when cable changed it forever. Now consider that the internet has only really been used as a form of communication for about ten years and blogs have had an impact for less than that. Nothing good ever stays free.

The Bucs are rolling at 4-1 in the spring right now. It's meaningless, but somehow it's also better than 1-4.

I'm going to be running WBC previews at FanHouse all week and they should start popping up in the sidebar soon. And the MLB Video Previews also start up tomorrow at FanHouse, so keep an eye out for that.

Despite my narrow loss in the Elite Eight, I will continue to link to Sean's Ramblings for the Final Four of the Pittsburgh Blog Tournament. Four good blogs left, including two fellow Bloguins (Bloguinites? Bloguinians?)

Bucsburgh has a question for everyone in the forum, which you should all sign up for and use.

That's all I have for links (for now), but if the weather breaks (it's cold and actually snowing) I'm hoping to get to a UNC baseball game sometime soon to see potential future Bucco Dustin Ackley in action on campus here.

John Russell, your club looks surprisingly good in the spring and after being predicted to show no power at the plate this year, they hit four home runs! How do you feel?

"The wind blowing out helps," Russell said after this 6-5 victory over Houston at Osceola County Stadium today, won by Paul Maholm, saved by Evan Meek and highlighted by homers from Brandon Moss, Craig Monroe, Robinzon Diaz and Jeff Salazar, the only unselfish one of the bunch to have the courtesy to drive in someone else besides himself (Diaz aboard on a walk). "But we swing the bats pretty well. As we go forward, guys will be starting to be more aggressive. We're not a big home-run-hitting team, and we popped a few."

OK, actually Russell's reaction is pretty much dead on here (if he hadn't mentioned the wind, I would've), but he's just so level all the time I can't help but laugh sometimes.

Pedro Alvarez! Game tying pinch-hit double! In the ninth inning!

That was certainly an awesome thing to see, but it's also utterly meaningless during Spring Training. I'll be excited if Alvarez can hold his own with the big boys in Bradenton this year, but if he can't I'm certainly not heading for the closest ledge. Of course that begs the question, what does matter in spring training? It's not really how most of the guys on the big league club play, unless they do something really awful and raise a red flag. Adam LaRoche hits well every spring training and tanks every April. But there are a few things to keep an eye on that might have a bearing on what Pirate team takes the field when the season starts.

I'm not trying to ruin anyone's enjoyment of spring training. I certainly enjoyed the hell out of Alvarez's hit and I hope he does it again. But at the same time, I'm also trying to figure out what performances actually mean something.

One thing to keep an eye on in certainly Don Veal. I think he's going north with the club either way, but if he can throw strikes with decent results I think it might be a good sign he's not a wasted roster spot. Similarly, if someone like Chris Bootcheck is performing surprisingly well, someone you expect to see in the pen might not be there. The team has a lot of arms in camp competing for bullpen spots, and that's not an accident.

I'm slower to evaluate starting pitchers under what I like to call "The Ryan Vogelsong Corollary." I guess there's a chance that someone like Dan McCutchen or Jimmy Barthmaier will blow the doors off of camp and steal a spot, but I think the team is much more inclined to watch them pitch in AAA before making that decision. In fact, for as much talk about rotation competition this spring, I'll be awfully surprised to see anyone other than Duke, Ohlendorf, Gorzelanny, Snell, and Maholm in the rotation come April. Jeff Karstens will have a chance to pick off one of the first two that I named, but it won't be easy.

Position players? I guess the team will only go north with one of Jeff Salazar and Craig Monroe and Jason Jaramillo and Robinzon Diaz are in a straight up competition for the backup catching slot, but beyond that everything is pretty set.

Spring training just isn't all that meaningful as a predictor. Some pitchers get shelled because they're only throwing fastballs while some can't throw strikes because they're working on a different pitch. Hitters are subject to those tinkerings and they're working on stuff of their own. It's awesome that baseball is back and any good performance is more welcome to see than a bad one, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's meaningful.

In a surprising move this morning, the Los Angeles Dodgers have announced the most important signing of the off-season. They have acquired the single most prized free agent in the history of all space and time, and somehow, they inked him to a minor league deal. That's right. The Los Angeles Dodgers have signed ... Doug Mientkiewicz.

The Dodgers are still a terrible offensive team and will remain that way until Manny Ramirez is re-signed, but this move today clinches a World Series trophy for them earlier than any team in history has ever won the Commissioner's Trophy. Mientkiewicz provides the Dodgers with an intangible amount of hustle, an incredible field of illusion that allows normally right-thinking fans and observers to believe that he's effective as a third baseman and a great base runner, bountiful subject matter for Bill Plaschke, especially on the subject, "My mancrush, the genius Ned Colletti,"  and some disillusioned Pittsburgh Pirate fans/player personnel experts.

"You know, most fans think we should be working on a deal with Manny Ramirez," said Colletti, "But the truth of the matter is, Mientkiewicz has always been our top priority this offseason. I mean, how could he not br? Have you seen his stubble? When's the last time anyone has won a World Series without a player that has stubble like that? Huh? I'll tell you one thing, I don't know how a terrible franchise like the Pirates could pass up a player like this. I mean, we just clinched the World Series. Why wouldn't the Pirates want that? Do they hate their fans?"

Pirate general manager Neal Huntington couldn't be reached for comment, but reports out of Bradenton say that the nerd was muttering something about Eric Hinske's total value to the club being far greater than Mientkiewicz's because he can play several positions and actually hit for a little power. Whatever that means.