So the Steelers played this football game tonight, and it kind of had a lame ending if you're a Steeler fan. Maybe you heard about it. If you know anything about the internet, you know that it more or less caught on fire like a fetid pile of gabage in the immediate aftermath, with two sides being drawn: pro-Tebow and anti-Tebow. You probably know how it unfolded from there. Some unfortunate people were caught in the crossfire. One of them was Andrew McCutchen's girlfriend. 

and so much animosity towards @MariaHanslovan.She meant no harm towards the Steelers.she is a fan n God fearing christian.simmer down folks.

— andrew mccutchen (@TheCUTCH22) January 9, 2012

In two months, #22 is literally going to be the only person that can drag an undertalented group of baseball players towards something that hasn't happened in Pittsburgh for two decades and to create some kind of crazy, improbable, Disney Movie moment not unlike the one that Mr. Tebow delivered for his fans tonight. Please be nice to his girlfriend.

It's Friday. There are seven Fridays until spring training games begin. There are 12 until Opening Day. Just typing that makes me feel a bit warmer inside. I think I speak for everyone when I say, "Hurry it along." 

While perusing MLB Trade Rumors this morning, hoping to find anything interesting happening on the Pirate front to write about, I noticed that there are still an awful lot of first baseman on the free agent market. Presumably, guys like Casey Kotchman and Derrek Lee and Carlos Pena are all waiting for Prince Fielder to sign before picking a team in hopes that one of the desperate runners-up in the Fielder Derby will pay them a little more than they're being offered right now. 

Here's the thing, though: the Prince Fielder Derby isn't nearly as heated as Prince or Scott Boras had hoped. Right now, it seems like almost a slam dunk he's going to end up in Washington because they're the only team that really seems interested beyond a passing glance. So what if we hit mid-January and Lee, Pena, and Kotchman are still on the market and could be had for reasonable prices? The Pirates haven't been openly interested in any of them except for Lee and since they traded for Casey McGehee and tendered Garrett Jones, it seems like they're probably done adding at the position. 

But what happens if they suddenly find that they could have Carlos Pena on a one-year/$8 million deal? Or Kotchman for $5 million? It would create a bit of a log-jam that might necessitate a Garrett Jones trade, but it would probably make the Pirates a bit better in 2012 (well, Pena probably would, Kotchman would be a gamble). 

I kind of doubt anything's going to happen here, I just think it's interesting that it's now January are there's still quite a few free agents on the market left at a position that the Pirates definitely had some need at when the winter started. I do think there's a chance that Jones/Kotchman/Nick Evans make a better combo than anyone expects and end up being quite a bit more productive than the first base position was last year, pre-Lee, but there's still some room for improvement. 

In announcing the signing of Jo-Jo Reyes to a minor league deal, the Pirates also announced that Logan Kensing will get a minor league deal and an invite to spring training. Kensing's a reliever who's spent most of his career with the Marlins, and he spent 2011 in the Yankees' system. He hasn't pitched in the Majors since 2009, as he missed all of 2010 with an injury.

Even in his unimpressive big league career, he's managed 8 strikeouts per nine innings (to go with a very high walk and homer rate) and his fastball averages around 93 mph. Which means he's exactly the sort of guy you'd expect the Pirates to invite to spring training to give a shot at the bullpen. 

Dejan Kovacevic is reporting this morning that the Pirates have "had talks" with Paul Maholm about a return to Pittsburgh, but that any such scenario is pretty "unlikely." I don't think that there's really anything too surprising about that report: bringing Maholm back makes sense to me in the same way that signing Jeff Francis would, and you can argue pretty easily that Maholm is a better pitcher than Francis at this point. On the other hand, if the Pirates were really interested in bringing Maholm back, they had plenty of time to make it happen and didn't, so you've got to figure that the Pirates probably have other plans in place. 

I think the most important part of DK's little blurb is this line: "Management continues to seek to add to its rotation, but any additions probably will come from nonroster invitees or means other than a high-profile free agent." What you take out of it depends on your definition of "high-profile free agent," but it means that the Pirates are still looking, as we guessed, and that Edwin Jackson is probably not a viable option, which wasn't hard to infer. Counting Jo-Jo Reyes, the Pirates only have four pitchers on their NRI list and only two of them -- Reyes and Shairon Martis -- are starters. What that means to me is this: you'd better hope the Pirates sign Paul Maholm or Jeff Francis, because if they don't they're signing Aaron Cook or Zach Duke. 

Jen Langosch is reporting tonight that the Pirates have signed lefty Jo-Jo Reyes to a minor league deal and from Reyes' own tweet, it's probably safe to assume that he'll be a non-roster invite to spring training. Reyes spent 2011 with the Blue Jays and Orioles after being traded from the Braves to the Royals in 2010. He was drafted by the Braves in the second round in 2003. 

If Reyes' name sounds familiar to you (and not because Jo-Jo is a funny name), it's probably because he managed to lose a whole bunch of consecutive starts between 2008 and 2011 with the Braves and Blue Jays. It's true that Reyes' big league numbers are pretty ugly: he's got a 6.05 ERA, he's got a 1.5 HR/9 rate, and his K/BB ratio is 1.47 (5.8:3.9, for the individual rates).

It's not hard to see why the Pirates would be interested in Reyes, though. His minor league numbers are very good, from strikeouts to walks to homers, even though he's 27 now and the minor league numbers haven't translated to the big leagues. 27 isn't ancient, though. If you want to parse the numbers, his K/BB ratio in 2011 (1.81) was the best of his career, even if it was torpedoed by an awful home run rate. If the Pirates can help him rein in his control and his home run problem (two things that they've had success with in the past), they might end up with a useful pitcher. It's also possible that he'd be more useful as a LOOGY, which teams can always use. 

That's likely a long-shot, but since it's a minor league deal it's at least a shot worth taking.  

Welcome to 2012, Pirate fans! Hopefully this year will be better than the last. I spent the last few days of 2011 and the first couple days of 2012 turning over post ideas and discussion points in my head, so the long holiday break here at WHYGAVS is over. Let's start with what's the Pirates' most pressing current need for what's left of the off-season: the starting rotation.

The Pirates still need more innings from their starting rotation if they want it to be anywhere near as useful in 2012 as it was in the early part of 2011, before things got derailed, went flying off of the bridge and into the ravine, and exploded in a huge fireball of devastation. Bedard is a nice start and Morton and McDonald aren't terrible options, but questions about Bedard's health and Morton's health and the huge margins of error around what we're hoping for from Morton and McDonald and what we might get, plus the volatility of Jeff Karstens and Brad Lincoln, plus what looks from here like a lack of depth from Locke, Owens, Morris, Wilson, etc., all means that the rotation could be a huge liability next year. So what should the Pirates do? 

There's been some scuttlebutt around the internet of late that Edwin Jackson's availability on the market could mean that he'll fall into the Pirates' range. I don't think there's anything officially linking the Pirates to Jackson at this point, but given that he's only 28, that he's a hard thrower occasionally capable of good strikeout numbers, and that the Pirates seem to have forged a pretty decent relationship with his agent -- a Mr. Scott Boras -- in recent years, it wouldn't be surprising if the Pirates were interested. Still, Wallace Matthews at ESPN New York says that Boras wants five years and $60 million for Jackson (via MLBTR), which is pretty steep. 

Let's assume, for a second, that this is what it would take for the Pirates to sign Jackson (I'm guessing Jackson ends up signing with a non-Pirate team for maybe four years/$40 million, but it would probably take the Pirates being the only team willing to hit Boras's price to actually bring Jackson to Pittsburgh). They could probably afford this in 2012 and they could maybe afford it down the road, though it'd likely require some belt-tightening towards the end of the deal as Andrew McCutchen and Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez (well, hopefully Alvarez will be good enough to create this problem, at least) head towards arbitration and get pricier. Jackson's young enough and seems durable enough (200+ innings in 2009 and 2010, 199 2/3 last year) that five years for him right now might not be disastrous, even if $12 million per year seems a bit pricey. 

The question, though, is whether that would really be the best use of the Pirates' limited resources. Read Dave Cameron's piece at FanGraphs about the remaining value on the market, and the Pirates' interest in a guy like Jeff Francis makes some sense, if they can get him on a one-year deal. Consider this: Jackson was a 3-4 win pitcher last year (3.1 bbrefWAR, 3.8 fangraphsWAR) while Francis was a 1.5-2.5 win pitcher (1.4 bbrefWAR, 2.6 fangraphsWAR). Let's say that the Pirates could sign Francis for a one-year deal worth $5 million, plus a team option for 2013 that costs $8 million with a $1 million buyout (literally, I'm throwing crap at the wall here). And let's say that Jackson maintains his level of performance, while a move to the NL and lefty-friendly PNC, plus another year away from injury makes Francis a 2-3 win pitcher in 2012 (not entirely improbable, though not a sure thing, either). Isn't Francis a smarter signing for the Pirates, even if he's not quite as good as Jackson in 2012 or down the road? He could still be a better value option in the short-term, while giving them more payroll flexibility in the long-term and buying some more time to both figure out what they have in Lincoln, Locke, Owens, Morris, and Wilson while figuring out an arrival schedule for Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon. 

It's not cut-and-dried, of course. Jackson could be a late bloomer that really blossoms as he approaches 30, Francis could get hurt again and be a disaster in 2012. Jackson's been traded six times already in his career and he's exactly the sort of player that teams will always be willing to take a chance on, if he's healthy, so the Pirates could sign him to a five-year deal and probably not have much trouble trading him after three if the need arises, especially if he pitches well. Still, the Pirates can't do anything at this point without an eye on the future and one of their biggest future assets at this point is that they simply don't have a lot of whole lot of payroll obligation beyond the present. Signing Jackson to a long-term deal would threaten that, and it might not even give them a huge short-term advantage over some of the lesser names on the free agent market. 

This is probably a sad indictment of my existence as a Pirate fan, but when every year starts my general hopes for the Pirates can be boiled down thusly: I hope that they're not too embarrassingly terrible and I hope that whatever happens over the course of the next 365 days gets them closer to a future in which I can have Pirate-related-hopes that aren't so depressing. Usually the Pirates fall short even on that front and they do it in predictable fashion. 2011, though, was a lot different. 

As usually happens, though, I managed to talk myself into the 2011 edition of the Pirates, at least a little, by the time spring training had ended. When I did my usual round of season previews along with radio and podcast interviews about the team, my position had evolved into something like, "Well, the Pirates are going to be pretty bad this year and there's no chance they're going to win much of anything, but at least they're very young and built around a core group of players that might eventually help the Pirates win something down the road. Even if they don't win a lot of games, they could be making progress towards a Pirate team that does win a lot of games with big seasons by McCutchen and Tabata and Walker and Alvarez." That, at least, seemed more interesting to me than the 105-loss nightmare team from 2010. 

When the season finally started the Pirates spent a bit of time treading water. Walker and Tabata got off to hot starts, Alvarez struggled, McCutchen kind of lurked in the background with better numbers than people realized. I got ready for a year of Pirate Limbo, arguing over what the young player performances meant, trying to read the tea leaves to see if this 70-75 win team could really mean something better down the road. That's really where the season ended up, but it took a strange detour on the way.

In June, the Pirates started winning games. It wasn't pretty and it didn't seem sustainable, but they were winning. How do you tell a group of fans that haven't seen a winning team in 19 years not to enjoy the best run their favorite baseball team has seen in years? How do you fail to enjoy that yourself? It was strange to watch, not only because it didn't end. The Pirates ended June 41-39 and within striking distance of first place in the NL Central. I saw them beat the Astros on the Fourth of July at laughed at the post-game radio chatter that they might be in first place at the All-Star break. In reality, they didn't surge into a tie for first until the day after the break, then they spent two straight days alone at the top of the NL Central on July 18th and 19th. 

The whole run to the top of the division was surreal. Tabata and Alvarez spent much of the time injured, Walker's play fell off a bit as the season wore on, the off-season acquisitions of Lyle Overbay and Matt Diaz were miserably bad and by summer, Kevin Correia had joined them. The main reasons for the team's success were that Andrew McCutchen was having an MVP-level first half and that the pitching staff was putting up an impressive ERA despite an inability to strike anyone at all out. I was expecting the other shoe to fall eventually, but when it did it happened in an even more surreal fashion than the run to the top. 

On Monday, July 25th, the Pirates were tied for first place with the Cardinals and Brewers. The afternoon before, they rallied to beat the Cardinals 4-3 in 10 innings in front of 35,000+ Pirate fans at PNC Park. It wasn't just Pirate fans noticing, either. That night, the Pirates played on ESPN for the first time that anyone could remember and it seemed to me that the Pirates had become the unofficial second favorite team of most baseball fans. I was trying to keep an even keel, but I was excited to see them on ESPN.

Of course, the game started with a rain delay, which annoyed me because I had a give my department's weekly seminar at 11 AM on Tuesday morning. It finally started, though, and when it did, the Pirates earned their rare national spotlight. James McDonald struck out nine Braves in 5 1/3 innings, a bevy of relievers held the Braves' bats in check for the final 3 2/3 innings, and the Pirates won 3-1. Most of the talk on the broadcast centered on how impressed the national broadcasters were with the Pirates and how they felt this young Pirate team was "for real."

The game didn't end until after 11 PM, by my recollection, and after I stayed up later rehearsing my talk, I was worn out the next day. I'm usually a night owl, but when I headed home from lab that night I distinctly remember thinking to myself that I wanted to get home, watch the Pirates, write a recap of whatever happenened, and then pretty much go straight to bed because I was so tired. That wasn't going to happen. Instead, the Pirates and Braves played a 19 inning marathon that took nearly seven hours and ended when home plate umpire Jerry Meals made an awfully questionable call at home plate. I still don't really want to talk about it much beyond that.

After that, things fell apart quickly. The Pirates lost in 10 innings the next night, stole a win on their way out of Atlanta (July 27th, if you're counting at home) and then didn't win again until August 8th. As insane as it is to type this, the Pirates were tied for first place after the 19-inning game and ten games out before they collected their second win after the late-inning debacle. The losing didn't stop there. They lost four of their next five, bounced back for two wins against the Cardinals (it seemed like a knockout blow at the time), then lost four out of five again. They had another five game losing streak. They had another four game losing streak. They ended the season 72-90 and 43 of those losses came after July 25th. It was insane and crazy and just plain sad to see what had been a feel-good season turn into a nightmare. After 18 straight losing seasons, the Pirates found a new way to rack up number 19. It took a lot out of me, it took a lot out of every Pirate fan. 

Now it's December 30th, more than three months after the crazy roller coaster of a season ended, and I'm still not sure what to make of 2011. The Pirates have a lot of talent in the minor leagues right now and I think when people start ranking minor league systems, they're going to score pretty highly. A lot of that talent is a ways away from the Majors, though, which is going to make it hard for one "wave" of talent to swell into a second. For all of its inspiration, last year's surprising success didn't have much to do with the Pirates' young players. The Pirates' young players are still young and not beyond hope, though. The front office is taking a different approach to bolster the roster for 2012. A good year from Pedro Alvarez and some success from the arms the Pirates have stockpiled in the lower minors could make things look very differently in 366 days. 

How will we remember 2011, though? Will it be the first sign of life from a long-dormant franchise? A season that we all look back on and say, "Things were tough, but when the Pirates put things together in the first half of 2011, I knew the team was finally going in the right direction." Or will it be nothing but a blip on the screen, a season that's remembered as somehow even more painful than the 105-loss season that preceded it because of the way that it created even more promises that went unfulfilled.

There's no way to answer that question right now, of course, so maybe what we should take from this weird year of Pirate baseball is this: Being a Pirate fan can be an exercise in numbness. Set your expectations low, watch the team underachieve, and move on to set your expectations even lower. In most years, being a Pirate fan doesn't require much but it doesn't reward much, either. This year, though, was different. Seeing the Pirates in first place was a rush, even if you were like me and didn't expect it to last. And because it was a rush, it was awful to see them fall apart and turn back into the same old Pirates in August and September. I don't know how 2011 will be remembered in the longer narrative of the Huntington/Coonelly era or the Pirate franchise, but for now, at least, I know it was the year that reminded me how to be a living, breathing baseball fan again. Hopefully, the future will hold more of that, whatever else it brings us. 

Bill Brink has some good stuff up at the PG about the Pirates' blueprint. Both his main article from yesterday about the "waves" of talent that the team is trying to create and his behind the scenes chat with Frank Coonelly (at PG+) that goes into detail about the payroll are worth your time, if you haven't read them already. 

At The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man nicely sums up what I hate about the Hall of Fame witch hunt at this time of year, especially as it currently relates to Jeff Bagwell.  

MLB Trade Rumors says the Pirates could be a "dark horse" for Edwin Jackson. That's probably not indicative of a whole lot at this point, but it says to me that they're still looking for pitching. You probably already know that I think they need one more starter for their rotation right now, so I'll keep on looking for any sign I can find that they're trying to do that.