It's the time of year where we get tons of non-news all at once! Evan Meek joined Jeff Karstens in avoiding arbitration today, signing an $875,000 contract.

That leaves two guys left without deals: Garrett Jones and Casey McGehee. According to Rob Biertempfel, here are the terms the two sides have exchanged: 

#Pirates exchange salary figures with Garrett Jones ($2.25M/$2.5M) and Casey McGehee ($2.725M/$2.35M).

— Rob Biertempfel (@BiertempfelTrib) January 18, 2012

There's not a whole lot to say here because not a huge difference in the figures for either player. I'm guessing that the team will setlle up with both guys relatively painlessly. I do think it's kind of funny that the Pirates traded for McGehee and still can't agree with him on a deal, but since it's only a $375k difference, it's really not a big deal. 

The Pirates avoided arbitration with Jeff Karstens today, signing at one-year deal for $3.1 mllion (per Rob Biertempfel). There's very little analysis to be done on these sorts of one-year deals, since there's usually a pretty narrow range that the salaries are likely to fall into given experience and performance. Karstens is getting a bit more than expected here and he would've made for an interesting arbitration case given the gulf between his ERA (3.38) and his FIP/xFIP (4.29/4.00). That said, it's understandable why the Pirates would want to avoid exactly this sort of arbitration case. Karstens was quite a bit better last year than he was in the past and arguing over how much better he was seems like the sort of counterproductive exercise better left for bloggers and private front office conversations about internal evaluations. In the short term, it's probably just easier for the Pirates to offer up a few hundred thousand more dollars and keep their players happy rather than fight over it in this kind of situation. 

Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com has his top ten right-handed pitching prospects list out this week and it's got Jameson Taillon at #3 and Gerrit Cole at #6. The placement seems odd (I think most people have them flipped), but man, it's just nice to see two Pirates in the top ten. There's a deeper discussion to be had about whether or not the Pirates' system is too top-heavy as currently constructed and if anything can be done about that in the near future, but for now let's just sit back and appreciate that if you're going to be top heavy, it's nice to have guys like this at the top. 

The Pirates aggred to a one year, $4.1 million with Joel Hanrahan that has performance bonuses for games finished. That's pretty expected from all sides, as the club hasn't been discussing a long-term deal with Hanrahan. The club also came to terms with Chris Resop over the weekend, which leaves Garrett Jones, Charlie Morton, Jeff Karstens, Evan Meek, and Casey McGehee left on the list of arbitration-eligible players that they need to work a deal out with. 

UPDATE: Cross Morton off the list; he's agreed to a one-year, $2.45 million deal. It's his first year of arbitration.  

The Pirates have been awfully quiet of late. They haven't really made much news since the Erik Bedard signing at the end of the winter meetings. Things are going to move quickly over the next ten days on the free agent market (prediction: Prince Fielder will sign by the January 25th at the latest; things will fall into place fast once the Rangers' negotation with Yu Darvish ends on Wednesday) and with only about a month until pitchers and catchers report, it's entirely possible that the Pirates are done wheeling and dealing for the winter. 

It's not a sure thing that they're done, though. We know that the club has expressed interest in both Jeff Francis and Derrek Lee, two guys who are still on the free agent market and may be waiting things out to see if they can still stumble into a bigger-than-expected contract. The Pirates can pretty clearly make use of another pitcher and bringing in another first baseman wouldn't exactly hurt them at this point, so it's possible they're still interested in Francis or Lee or any of a number of other first basemen or pitchers who are still on the free agent market, waiting for Prince Fielder and Edwin Jackson to sign. Then again, Paul Maholm said he wasn't contacted by the Pirates before signing a cheap deal with the Cubs, which may indicate that they're not planning on adding more pitching at this point. It's easy to read things in more than one way when a team is as quiet as the Pirates have been over the last few weeks

To this point, the Pirates have had a weirdly nondescript off-season given the sheer volume of moves they've made. They've turned over a huge portion of their 40-man roster this winter, but I'm not sure that they're much better or worse, on the whole, than they were when the 2011 season or they were at this point a year ago. They made some moves that could pay off quite nicely for them (mainly signing Bedard, though there's some upside possibility in both the Navarro and McGahee trades), they made some moves with some significant risk (Bedard and I will continue to be concerned about Barmes's ability to hit at PNC Park going forward), and they made some moves that will likely have little net effect on the team at all when compared to 2011 (Barmes and Barajas, most likely). Entering the winter there was a risk that the Pirates would come out of it with a team significantly worse than the 2011 edition and I think they've avoided that, but I'm not prepared to say much more than that at this point. 

That could change quite a bit, of course, if it turns out the Pirates aren't done making moves this winter. If Tim's guess of a $46 million payroll is right, the Pirates could probably spend somewhere in the ballpark of $10 million more this winter, should the right opportunity arise. Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson and Carlos Pena will all probably sign deals somewhere in that neighborhood (for varying lengths, of course), while the Pirates could probably get Jeff Francis and Derrek Lee or Casey Kotchman combined for about that price.

It's fun to think about adding Oswalt or Jackson to the rotation or Pena to the lineup, as all three guys bring things to the table that the Pirates don't really have right now, but I find it hard to see any of them landing in Pittsburgh. If I were Roy Oswalt, I'd take $4 million from the Red Sox before I'd take $8 million from the Pirates at this point in my career and I still don't see the Pirates making the multi-year committment that Jackson will likely require. There's not really any reason to think the Pirates are interested in Pena, either, as they could've had him last winter at a reasonable cost or at the trade deadline at a reasonable cost and they haven't even appeared to feign interest in him this winter. More than likely if the Pirates do anything else before the winter ends, it'll be another move or two in the same vein as the ones they've already made this winter.

Should they be trying to do more? If you assume the Pirates are a 70-75 win team right now (that's about how I'd peg them, though I haven't put a whole ton of thought into that kind of prediction), you could probably guess that Jackson and Pena would make them a 75-80 win team. That's getting close to something, but is it enough? Despite popular opinion, I think that the NL Central will be a tough division this year. The Brewers still have a good rotation and enough power at the plate to contend and the Reds and Cardinals have the ability to be two of the best teams in the National League. It's really hard to see the Pirates being better than two of those teams, plus the runners up of the Phillies/Braves/Marlins race and the Giants/Diamondbacks/Rockies/Dodgers race in 2012.

Of course, the Pirates can't (or at least shouldn't) just throw up their hands and say, "We didn't sign those guys because we have no chance to contend in 2012."Going out and blowing money just because they have some to spend at the moment it isn't necessarily the right thing to do, either. I do think they need another starting pitcher right now, and I'd hope that even if they think they have Jeff Francis locked in that they explore their other options as the prices on the market fall with teams like the Yankees falling out of the running for starting pitching. 

The asking prices have come down significantly for veteran FA starters: Oswalt (said to be at $8m), Kuroda (10-11m), Edwin Jackson.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) January 13, 2012

Go for it, Neal.

In part one on Wednesday, I talked about how Brad Lincoln was able to get more groundballs in 2011, which went a long ways towards halving his home run rate and making him more effective than he was with the Pirates in 2010. In part two, let's tackle the deeper questions. What made Lincoln more effective last year and is it something that we can count on from him in 2012?

First stop: the pitch types tab on Lincoln's FanGraphs page. Lincoln throws three pitches that are pretty distinguishable on the PitchFX charts, so the pitch types should be pretty reliable. In 2010, Lincoln threw his fastball 65% of the time, his curve 25% of the time, and his changeup 10%. Last year, he threw his fastball 70% of the time, his curve 12% of the time, and his change 18% of the time. In short, he threw his fastball a little more, his changeup a lot more, and his curveball a lot less. That's a shift that could result in more groundballs, particularly if Lincoln's fastball showed more sink last year. Let's dial up the PitchFX
 
If you need a refresher on picking out pitch types from the break charts, go here. It's really easy to see where Lincoln's extra changeups are (right around the horizonal axis), and if you go just a little bit up and to the left from there [if you're looking at the graph in terms of traditional x,y coordinates I'm looking right around (-10, 5)] it looks like there might be a few more blue dots in the area that we'd generally associate with two-seam fastballs or sinkers. 

It's not a huge difference, though, so lets look a little bit deeper. I'm particularly interested in Lincoln's solid four start run when he joined the rotation in late August of last year (between August 22nd through September 6th). Let's pull those starts out on the same chart. 
It looks like an awful lot of Lincoln's fastballs in those four starts trended more towards two-seamers/sinkers, especially in comparison to 2010. More changeups and more sinkers; that's got Ray Searage and Jim Benedict written all over it to me. 

What's interesting about this to me is that when Lincoln was drafted, it was generally established that his fastball and curveball were good and he needed a changeup to become an effective pitcher. In 2012, he threw the changeup 18% of the time with decent results (FanGraphs scored it as a tick above average) and he was still only marginally effective. 

The reason for that is that he still just doesn't fool many batters. A strikeout rate of 5.5 K/9 innings isn't great and if you look at the plate discipline numbers of hitters facing Lincoln and compare them to league average, you can see that while Lincoln did a much better job across the board in 2011 (that is: getting hitters to chase out of the zone, getting hitters to swing and miss, lowering contact rates both in and out of the strike zone, etc.), he still gives up more balls in play than he should.

So why does that happen? The pitch value numbers would seem to indicate that it's his fastball that's being feasted on. With a groundball rate of over 50% in 2011, though, I'm not sure it'd be fair to speculate that his fastball is flat. It's not quite the fastball that the Pirates hoped he'd have when he was drafted in 2006, probably, since it averages below 92 mph, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad pitch, either. What stands out to me from poring over these numbers is this: Lincoln's walk rate last year was not exactly exemplary (3.02 BB/9 isn't bad, but it's worse than his minor league numbers and it's not great for someone with a strikeout rate below 6 K/9 and it's also the only category he didn't improve on from his ugly 2010 debut year), but he throws a lot of balls in the strike zone. PitchFX says that 52.1% of his pitches are in the strike zone, compared to a 49.8% league average in 2011.

Lincoln throws a lot of balls in the strikezone, doesn't miss a ton of bats, and still walks a decent amount of hitters. The only conclusion I can take from that is that he's not really fooling hitters, that they're sitting on his curve and changeup waiting for a fastball that they can rope. I don't know if that's because he throws too many strikes or because he's tipping pitches or because he and his catchers are jway too predictable with pitch sequence or because he just threw a ton of fastballs last year and his fastball command is way better than his offspeed command. I do know that based on 2011 alone that I think he deserves a shot in the rotation before Kevin Correia. If the coaching staff can find a way for him to keep hitters just a little bit more off balance than he has in the past (Tangent: I'm not talking about a huge improvement here and also, please keep in mind that this is a pretty nuanced situation that I'm not sure the coaches can help him with. If he's tipping they can obviously fix that. If it's an approach thing or if it has to do with fastball command vs. breaking ball command, they might be able to fix it but they also might not be able to do anything at this point in the guy's career.) he might even make a decent back-end starter. I doubt he'll ever be more than that, but right now I think the Pirates would be plenty happy if he could emerge as a #4 starter in 2012. 

The Phillies released John Bowker this week to let him pursue a contract in Japan. This is not a huge deal at all. I always thought that based on his minor league numbers, Bowker deserved more of a chance with the Pirates, but it was clear both in Pittsburgh and San Francisco before that there was something about Bowker that his front offices and managers didn't think would translate to the big leagues and that he wasn't likely to get that shot, nor was keeping him from playing going to turn into a Craig Wilson/Freddy Sanchez situation. 

The main reason that I mention this is so that I can link to Grant Brisbee's piece at McCovey Chronicles about Bowker, because it's just an excellent piece of sports-blogging. It's funny how things circle: part of the reason that I liked the Javier Lopez trade so much initially (and don't get me wrong: the Pirates got nothing from it and I still think it was a good trade) was that Brisbee hated it and the reason he hated was that he felt the way about Bowker that I was about to feel. 

Good luck in Japan, Mr. Bowker.  

If the 2012 season was starting tomorrow, the Pirates rotation would likely feature James McDonald, Erik Bedard, Charlie Morton, Jeff Karstens, and Kevin Correia in some order. That's an interesting because of the talent that exists in the first three spots, but it's also a paper-thin one. Charlie Morton already has an injury that could cut into the early part of the season and we don't know how it will affect him. Counting on Erik Bedard to throw 200 innings is foolish. McDonald had an up-and-down 2011 season that left us with a lot of questions. Karstens is a serious regression candidate after his breakout year last year, and Correia's likely to be throwing pitches that look like watermelons most of the time. Even if the Pirates go out and add Jeff Francis and bump Correia, there's a depth problem. Heck, there's a bit of a depth problem even if they break open the checkbook and sign Edwin Jackson. 

There are, of course, a few internal options that could end up providing depth. Jeff Locke had some success in a handful of Triple-A starts last year before an ugly end to the season with the Pirates. Rudy Owens struggled a bit in Triple-A, but may rebound if the shoulder problem that manifested itself late in the 2011 season was holding him back. Bryan Morris and Justin Wilson may get another shot at starting, though they're both in the bullpen at the present. From this (admittedly early) vantage point, none of these guys seem likely to break camp with the team or to unseat Correia (who's clearly the weak link right now), so instead I want to focus on Brad Lincoln. 

After a very difficult stint with the Pirates in 2010, Lincoln at least showed some progress in 2011. He made a spot start for the Pirates in July, joined the bullpen in early August, then made seven starts of varying quality from mid-August through the end of the season. His 4.72 ERA on the year wasn't great, but he nearly halved his homer rate (he gave up nine homers in 52 2/3 innings in 2010 and just four in 47 2/3 in 2011), which was a huge problem for him in his first Pirate stint, and even increased his strikeout rate (4.3 K/9 to 5.5) a bit, though he was still a bit below where he needs to be to be effective there. If you factor in his much-improved groundball rate (37.2% to 51.6% in 2011), you can see that Lincoln's FIP and xFIP weren't bad last year and if you use either of those stats to measure his short season, he was grades out better than James McDonald. 

So did Lincoln make a stride forward with the Pirates in 2011? Is it something he can build on, a sign of something to come? Or will his home run problem and low strikeout rate come back to haunt him and keep him from ever being even a mid-rotation big league starter? To try and get an answer to this question, let's start by comparing his Triple-A numbers with his big league numbers. Triple-A goes first. 

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/11/2012.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/11/2012.

When Lincoln first got to Triple-A in 2009, he had some of the same problems he had during his first stint with the Pirates in 2010. He gave up too many home runs and he didn't strike out a ton of hitters. In 2010, he increased his strikeouts at the expense of some control and in 2011, he made strides with the home run problem and had the best K/BB rate of his three partial years with Indianapolis. 

That leaves me with some questions. Why did his home run rate go down and his groundball rate go up last year? Was it some work that the Pirates' staff did with him, or was it something else? What's his ceiling in the big leagues in terms of strikeout rate? It has to be higher than 5.5 K/9 for him to be a useful big league pitching, I think. Can he lower his walk rate without serving up meatballs again? 

At least some of this can be answered with PitchFX, but some of it is a wider question about Lincoln's ceiling and what makes a useful pitcher in the big leagues. And that's where I'm headed with part 2. 

As expected, Paul Maholm signed a one-year deal with the Cubs with an option for 2013. It's worth $4.25 million, which is a nice value for the Cubs and certainly a price I wouldn't have argued with had he signed the deal with the Pirates. The other pitching news today is that the Orioles signed Taiwanese lefty We-Yi Chen to a three-year deal. The Pirates showed at least passing interest in Chen earlier this winter, though it's possible that his recent injuries (which resulted in some ugly numbers in 2011) scared them off. 

You can do the math yourself here, but with Maholm and Chen and Aaron Cook (who signed with Boston over the weekend) all off the market, the Pirates' choices for more starting pitching depth are awfully limited at this point in the winter. Beyond going out and bringing in more NRIs for spring training (which isn't an awful idea, of course), the market is pretty much limited to Jeff Francis and Edwin Jackson. Francis would be cheap (I'd expect Maholm's deal to dictate the terms of his deal), though unexciting, while Jackson (who the Pirates haven't shown interest in beyond reporters and bloggers hypothesizing, as far as I can tell) would be a bit pricier and require a bit of a long-term committment. 

I also think it's worth noting that the Orioles signed both Tsyoshi Wada and Wei-Yi Chen this winter and they signed Koji Uehara before the 2009 season. I always say that I want to see the Pirates involved in the bidding for NPB players, and this sort of thing is why. It's sort of a Catch-22 (if you've signed some NPB players, you're more likely to be able to sign more, but if you haven't, it can be difficult to start, especially if, say, for theoretical example, Akinori Iwamura had a bad experience in Pittsburgh) and the Pirates have signed some teenage amateurs from Taiwan, but it's somewhere I'd like to see the Pirates make some inroads.